i PN 



N6b rCHOICE THOUGHTS: 



SELECTIONS FROM NEARLY Oi^E HUNDRED 
AND FIFTY DIFFERENT AUTHORS, 




FOR USE OF 



HIGH SCHOOLS 

FOR READING, RECITATION^ AND ANALYSIS. 



CIIAS. XORTHEND, ■ 

Author of " Teacher's Ass'stanf^ etc., end 

I. N. CARLETON, 

Principal of Conn. Normal Scnool. 



NEW YGRK: 

D. AfPLETON & COMPANY, 

549 A\j -,51 Broadway, 



•j 



# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

\ 1 ?Nxrrt ; — 

W*9 : fW^i f ° 

<£%,$ xMLh 



t UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



CHOICE THOUGHTS; 



SELECTIONS FROM NEARLY ONE HUNDRED 
AND FIFTY DIFFERENT AUTHORS, 



FOR USE OF 



High Schools 



FOR READING, RECITATION, AND ANALYSIS, 



CHAS. KORTHEND, 

Author of "■ Teacher's Assistant," 1 etc., and 



b 



I. K CARLETOX, 

A Principal of Conn. Kormal School. 



CO a. 

7 i^ 



NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 

549 and 551 Broadway, 

1S78. 



tih 






Copyrighted. 
CHARLES HORTHEND. 

1877. 



EEMAEKS. 



This little manual has been prepared to meet the "wants 
and wishes of many parents and teachers. It was sug- 
gested by a discussion at a meeting of teachers where the 
opinion was very decidedly expressed that more attention 
should be given to memoriter exercises in schools and fami- 
lies. Youth is the golden season for storing the memory 
with choice thoughts and expressions. An eminent educa- 
tor,* in alluding to the importance of this, says: — "Had it 
not been for the wise course of my parents I should now be 
without the comfort of innumerable gems, of prose and 
poetry, sacred and secular, which I committed to memory 
in childhood." 

This little book contains about two hundred choice 
selections from nearly one hundred and fifty different and 
eminent authors, — and each selection has, at least, one 
thought worthy of special attention. 

Pupils should be required to commit them very carefully 
and recite them accurately and clearly, and also give a brief 
account of the author of the selection. At the end of each 
piece the name of the writer is given, with place and date 
of birth, and if the writer is not living, the date of death. It 
will be a useful exercise for pupils to search for items of 

* Newton Bateman, Pres. of Knox College. 



iv REMARKS. 

interest. Appleton's American Cyclopedia, Lippincott's 
Biograpliical Dictionary, and Allibone's Dictionary of 
Authors will be valuable for reference. 

It is believed the compilation will also be found useful 
for an occasional reading book, and for lessons in analysis 
and parsing. 

"With the sincere hope that it may prove both acceptable 
and useful, it is offered to teachers and parents with the 
best wishes of the 

COMPILERS, 

New Britain, Conn., 
September, 1877. 

K. B. A smaller manual, with shorter selections, de- 
signed for grammar and intermediate schools, entitled 
"Memory Gems," has already been favorably received. It 
is from the same publishing house. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 



PART I -PROSE. 



1. Weil-Doing. 

There is no virtue without a characteristic beauty to 
render it particularly loved of the good, and to make 
the bad ashamed of their neglect of it. To do what 
is right, argues superior taste as well as morals; and 
those whose practice is evil have a certain feeling of 
inferiority in intellectual power and enjoyment, even 
where they take no concern for a principle. Doing 
well has something more in it than the mere fulfilling 
of a duty. It is a cause of a just sense of elevation 
of character; it clears and strengthens the spirits; it 
gives higher reaches of thought; it widens our benev- 
olence, and makes the current of our peculiar affections 

strong and deep. 

E. II. Dana, Mass., 1787— . 

2. Education. 

The aim of education is to show our youth the 
broad line of demarcation between the value of those 
1* 



6 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

things which can be owned by but one, and those 
which can be owned and enjoyed by all. If I own a 
ship, a house, a farm, or a mass of the metals called 
precious, my right to them is, in its nature, sole and 
exclusive. No other man has a right to trade with 
my ship, to occupy my house, to gather my harvests, 
or appropriate my treasures to his use. They are 
mine, and are incapable both of a sole and of a joint 
possession. But not so of the treasures of knowl- 
edge, which it is the duty of education to diffuse. 
The same truth may enrich and ennoble all intelli- 
gences at once. Infinite diffusion subtracts nothing 
from depth. None are poorer because others are 
made rich. In this part of the Divine economy, the 
privilege of primogeniture attaches to all, and every 
son and daughter of Adam is an heir to an infinite 
patrimony. 

27. Mann, Mass., 1796-1859. 



3. Books. 

A book is good company. It is full of conversation 
without loquacity. It comes to our longing with full 
instruction, but pursues us never. It is not offended 
at our absent-mindedness, nor jealous if we turn to 
other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even 
of books. It silently serves the soul without recom- 
pense, not even for the hire of love. And, yet more 
noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the 
memory, and to hover in a silvery transformation 
there, until the outward book is but a body and its 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 7 

soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your 
memory like a spirit. And while some books, like 
steps, are left behind us by the very help which they 
yield us, and serve only our childhood or early life, 
some others go with us, in mute fidelity, to the end of 
life, a recreation for fatigue, an instruction for our 
sober hours, and solace for our sickness or sorrow. 
Except the great out-doors, nothing that has so much 
life of its own gives so much life to us. 

H. W. Beecher, Conn., 1S13— . 

4. Work. 

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask 
no other blessedness. He has a work, a life purpose; 
he has found it and will follow it! How, as a free 
flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through 
the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever- 
deepening river there, it runs and flows; draining off 
the sour, festering water gradually from the root of 
the remotest grass-blade; making, instead of pestilen- 
tial swamp, a green, fruitful meadow, with its clear, 
flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, 
let the stream and its value be great or small! Labor 
is life; from the inmost heart of the worker rises his 
God-given force, — the sacred, celestial life-essence, 
breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost 
heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, 
"self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as work 

fitly begins. 

Thos. Carlyle, Scotland, 1793—. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 



5. Reflection. 



Nothing has such a tendency to weaken, not only 
the power of invention, but the intellectual powers in 
general, as a habit of extensive and various reading 
without reflection. The activity and force of mind 
are gradually impaired in consequence of disease ; and, 
not unfrequently, all our principles and opinions come 
to be lost in , the infinite multiplicity and discordancy 
of our acquired ideas. 

Dugald Stewart, Scotland, 1753-1828. 

6. Knowledge. 

It is noble to seek Truth, and it is beautiful to find 
it. It is the ancient feeling of the human heart that 
knowledge is better than riches; and it is deeply and 
sacredly true. To mark the course of human pas- 
sions as they have flowed on in ages that are past ; to 
see why nations have risen, and why they have fallen; 
to speak of heat, and light, and the winds; to know 
what man has discovered in the heavens above and in 
the earth beneath; to hear the chemist unfold the mar- 
velous properties that the Creator has locked up in a 
speck of earth; to be told that there are worlds so 
distant from our own that the quickness of light, 
traveling from the world's creation, has never yet 
reached us; to wander in the creations of poetry, and 
grow warm again with that eloquence which swayed 
the democracies of the Old "World; to go up, with 
great reasoners, to the First Cause of all, and to per- 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 9 

ceive, in the midst of all this dissolution and decay 
and cruel separation, that there is one thing unchange- 
able, indestructible, and everlasting; it is worthwhile, 
in the days of our youth, to strive hard for this great 
discipline; to pass sleepless nights for it; to give up 
for it laborious days; to spurn for it present pleasures; 
to endure for it afflicting poverty; to wade for it 
through darkness, and sorrow, and contempt, as the 
great spirits of the world have done in all ages and 
all times. 

Sydney Smith, England, 1771-1845. 

7. Life. 

Throughout this beautiful and wonderful creation 
there is never-ceasing motion, without rest by night 
or day, ever weaving to and fro. Swifter than a 
weaver's shuttle, it flies from birth to death, from 
death to birth; from the beginning seeks the end and 
finds it not; for the seeming end is only a dim begin- 
ning of a new out-going and endeavor after the end. 
As the ice upon the mountain, when the warm breath 
of the summer's sun breathes upon it, melts, and 
divides into drops, each of which reflects an image of 
the sun, so life, in the smile of God's love, divides 
itself into separate forms, each bearing in it, and 
reflecting, an image of God's love. 

II. W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807—. 



10 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

8. «k Nation's Glory. 

The true glory of a nation is in the living temple of 
a loyal, industrious, and upright people. The busy 
click of machinery, the merry ring of the anvil, the 
lowing of peaceful herds, and the song of the harvest- 
home, are sweeter music than the paeans of departed 
glory, or songs of triumph in war. The vine-clad 
cottage of the hillside, the cabin of the woodsman, 
and the rural home of the farmer, are the true citadels 
of any country. There is a dignity in honest toil 
which belongs not to the display of wealth, or the 
luxury of fashion. The man who drives the plow, or 
swings his axe in the forest, or with cunning fingers 
plies the tools of his craft, is as truly the servant of 
his country as the statesman in the senate, or the 
soldier in battle. 

Bis7wp II. B. Whipple, New York, 1819—. 

9. Knowledge and Gold. 

We hear much, at present, of the veins of gold 
which are brought to light in almost every latitude of 
either hemisphere. But I care not what mines are 
opened in the North or in the South; in the moun- 
tains of Siberia or the Sierras of California; whereso- 
ever the fountains of the golden tide may gush forth, 
the streams will flow to the regions where educated 
intellect has woven the boundless network of the use- 
ful and ornamental arts. It matters not if this new 
Pactolus flow through a region which stretches for fur- 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. \\ 

longs, — a wide tract of solid gold, — the jewels and the 
ingots will find their way to the great centers of civil- 
ization, where cultivated mind gives birth to the arts, 
and freedom renders property secure. 

Edw. Everett, Mass., 1794-1S65. 



10. Truthfulness. 

Never speak anything for a truth which you know 
or believe to be false. Lying is a great sin against 
God, who gave us a tongue to speak the truth and not 
falsehood. It is a great offense against humanity 
itself, — for where there is no regard to truth there can 
be no safe society between man and man. And it is 
an injury to the speaker; for besides the disgrace 
which it brings upon him, it occasions so much base- 
ness of mind that he can scarcely tell truth or avoid 
lying, even when he has no color of necessity for it; 
and, in time, he comes to such a pass that, as other 
people cannot believe he speaks the truth, so he him- 
self scarcely knows when he tells a falsehood. 

Sir Matthew Hale, England, 1609-1676. 

11. God in Nature. 

There is a God! The herbs of the valley, the 
cedars of the mountain bless Him; the insect sports 
in His beam; the bird sings Him in the foliage; the 
thunder proclaims Him in the heavens; the ocean 
declares His immensity. Man alone has said, "There 



12 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

is no God!" Unite in thought at the same instant 
the most beautiful objects in nature. Suppose that 
you see, at once, all the hours of the day, and all the 
seasons of the year, — a morning of spring, and a 
morning of autumn, — a night bespangled with stars, 
and a night darkened by clouds, — meadows enameled 
with flowers, — forests hoary with snow, — fields gilded 
by the tints of autumn, — then alone will you have a 
just conception of the universe! 

F. A. Chateaubriand, France, 1768-1S48. 



12. The Beautiful. 

Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in 
the numberless flowers of the spring. It waves in 
the branches of the trees and the green blades of 
grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and sea, and 
gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious 
stone. . . . The ocean, the mountains, the clouds, 
the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all 
overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; 
and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their 
eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it- 
on every side. 

Now, this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it 
gives are so refined and pure, so congenial with our 
tenderest and noblest feelings, and so akin to worship, 
that it is painful to think of the multitude of men as 
living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to 
it as if, instead of this fair earth and glorious sky, 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 13 

tliey were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is 
lost to the world by the want of culture of this spir- 
itual endowment. 

W. E. Channing, R. I., 1780-1842. 

13. Resolution. 

It is interesting to notice how some- minds seem 
almost to create themselves, springing up under every 
disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresist- 
ible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems 
to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with, 
which it would rear dullness to maturity, and to glory 
in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. 
She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and 
though some may perish among the stony places of 
the world, and some may be choked by the thorns 
and brambles of earthly adversity, yet others will now 
and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, 
struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over 
their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation. 

W. Irving, New York, 17S3-1S59. 

14. Labor. 

Without labor what is there? Without it there 
were no world itself. Whatever we see or perceive, 
in heaven or on earth, is the product of labor. The 
sky above us, the ground beneath us, the air we 
breathe, the sun, the moon, the stars, — what are 
they? The product of labor. They are the labors 
2 



14 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

of the Omnipotent, and all our labors are tmt a con- 
tinuance of His. Our work is a divine work. "We 
carry on what God began. What a glorious spectacle 
is that of the labor of man upon the earth! It 
includes everything in it that is glorious. Look 
around and tell me what you see, that is worth seeing, 
that is not the work of your hands and the hands of 
your fellows, — the multitude of all ages. 

Wm. HowiU, England, 1795—. 

15. Universal Education. 

Education must bring the practice as nearly as pos- 
sible to the theory. As the children now are, so will 
the sovereigns soon be. How can we expect the fab- 
ric of the government to stand if vicious materials 
are daily wrought into its framework ? Education 
must prepare our citizens to become municipal officers, 
intelligent jurors, honest witnesses, legislators, or 
competent judges of legislation, — in fine, to fill all 
the manifold relations of life. For this end it must 
be universal. The whole land must be watered with 
the streams of knowledge. It is not enough to have, 
here and there, a beautiful fountain playing in palace 
gardens ; but let it come like the abundant fatness of 
the clouds upon the thirsting earth. 

U. Mann, Mass., 1796-1859. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 15 

16. Goodness of God in Creation. 

Were all the interesting diversities of color and 
form to disappear, how unsightly, dull, and wearisome 
would be the aspect of the world! The pleasure con- 
veyed to us by the endless variety with which these 
sources of beauty are presented to the eye are so 
much things of course, and exist so much without 
intermission, that we scarcely think either of their 
nature, their number, or the great proportion which 
they constitute in the whole mass of our enjoyment. 
But were an inhabitant of this country to be removed 
from its delightful scenery to the midst of an Arabian 
desert — a boundless expanse of sand, a waste, spread 
with uniform desolation, enlivened by the murmur of 
no stream, and cheered by the beauty of no verdure; 
although he might live in a palace, and riot in splen- 
dor and luxury, he would find life a dull, wearisome, 
melancholy round of existence; and, amid all his 
gratifications, he would sigh for the hills and valleys of 
his native land, the brooks and rivers, the living lus- 
ter of the spring, and the rich glories of the autumn. 
The ever- varying brilliancy and grandeur of the land- 
scape, and the magnificence of the sky, sun, moon, 
and stars, enter more extensively into the enjoyment 
of mankind, than we, perhaps, even think or can pos- 
sibly apprehend, without frequent and extensive inves- 
tigation. The beauty and splendor of the objects 
around us, it is ever to be remembered, is not neces- 
sary to their existence, nor what we commonly intend 



16 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

as their usefulness. It is therefore to be regarded as 
a source of pleasure gratuitously superinduced upon 
the general nature of the objects themselves, and, in 
this light, as a testimony of the divine goodness, 
peculiarly affecting. 

Timothy Dwight, Mass., 1752-1817. 



17. The Sun, 

For all the kindreds and tribes and tongues of 
men — each upon their own meridian — from the Arctic 
Pole to the Equator, from the Equator to the Ant- 
arctic Pole, the eternal Sun strikes twelve at noon, 
and the glorious constellations, far up in the everlast- 
ing belfries of the skies, chime twelve at midnight; 
twelve for the pale student over his flickering lamp; 
twelve amid the flaming wonders of Orion's belt if he 
crosses the meridian at that fatal hour; twelve by the 
weary couch of languishing humanity; twelve in the 
star-paved courts of the Empyrean; twelve for the 
heaving tides of the ocean; twelve for the weary 
arm of labor; twelve for the toiling brain; twelve 
for the watching, waking, broken heart; twelve for 
the meteor which blazes for a moment and expires; 
twelve for the comet, whose period is measured by 
centuries; twelve for every substantial, for every im. 
aginary thing, which exists in the sense, the intellect, 
or the fancy, and which the speech or thought of man, 
at the given meridian, refers to the lapse of time. 

Edward Everett, Mass., 1794-1865. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 17 

18. The Sea. 

God has given the land to man, but the sea He has 
reserved to Himself. "The sea is His; and He made 
it." He has given man "no inheritance in it; no, 
not so much as to set his foot on." If he enters its 
domain, he enters it as a pilgrim and stranger. He 
may pass over it ; but he can have no abiding place 
upon it. He cannot build his house, nor so much as 
pitch his tent, within it. He cannot mark it with his 
lines, nor subdue it to his uses, nor rear his monu- 
ments upon it. It steadfastly refuses to own him as 
its lord and master. It is not afraid of him, as is the 
land. Its depths do not tremble at his coming. Its 
waters do not flee when he appeareth. "When it hears 
of him, then it laughs him to scorn. 

Leonard Swain, New England, . 

19. Our Destiny. 

It cannot be that earth is man's only abiding place. 
It cannot be that our life is a bubble, cast up by the 
ocean of eternity, to float a moment upon its waves, 
and sink into nothingness. Else why is it that the 
high and glorious aspirations, which leap like angels 
from the temple of our hearts, are for ever wandering 
about unsatisfied? Why is it that the stars, which 
hold their festival around the midnight throne, are set 
above the grasp of our limited faculties, for ever 
mocking us with their unapproachable glory ? And, 
2* 



18 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

finally, why is it that bright forms of human beauty 
are represented to our view, and then taken from us ; 
leaving the ten thousand streams of our affection to 
flow back in an Alpine torrent upon our hearts? 
Surely we are born for a higher destiny than that of 
earth. There is a realm where the rainbow never 
fades, — where the stars will spread out before us like 
islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the 
beautiful beings which here pass before us like shad- 
ows, will stay in our presence for ever. 

Sir Lytton Bulwer, England, 1805-1873. 

SO. The Solar System. 

If we look out upon the starry heavens by which we 
are surrounded, we find them diversified in every pos- 
sible way. Our own mighty Stellar System takes 
upon itself the form of a flat disc, which may be 
compared to a mighty ring, breaking into two distinct 
branches, severed from each other, the interior with 
stars less densely populous than upon the exterior. 
But take the telescope and go beyond this, and here 
you find, coming out from the depths of space, uni- 
verses of every possible shape and fashion; some of 
them assuming a globular form, and when we apply 
the highest possible penetrating power of the tele- 
scope, breaking into ten thousand brilliant stars, all 
crushed and condensed into one luminous, bright, and 
magnificent center.. 

O. M< Mitchell, Kentucky, 1S10-1862, 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 19 

21, Man. 

Every want, not of a low kind, physical as well as 
moral, which, the human breast feels, and which 
brutes do not feel, and cannot feel, raises man by so 
much in the scale of existence, and is a clear proof, 
and a direct instance, of the favor of God toward His 
so much favored human offspring. If man had been 
so made as to have desired nothing, he would have 
wanted almost everything worth possessing. 

Daniel Webster, N. H., 1782-1852. 

22. Swiftness of Life. 

Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. 
Our boat, at first, glides down the narrow channel, 
through the playful murmuring of the little brook, 
and the winding of its grassy border. The trees shed 
their blossoms over our young heads, the flowers on 
the brink seem to offer themselves to our young 
hands; we are happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly 
at the beauties around us, but the stream hurries on, 
and still our hands are empty. 

Bishop B. Heber, England, 1783-1826. 

23. The Present Moment. 

A celebrated modern writer says, "Take care of 
the minutes, and the hours will take care of them- 
selves." This is an admirable saying, and might be 



20 CHOICE THOUGHTS 

very seasonably recollected when we begin to be 
"weary in well doing," from the thought of having 
much to do. The present moment is all we have to 
do with, in any sense; the past is irrecoverable; the 
future is uncertain; nor is it fair to burden one 
moment with the weight of the next. Sufficient unto 
the moment is the trouble thereof. If we had to 
walk a hundred miles, we still should have to set but 
one step at a time, and this process, continued, would 
infallibly bring us to our journey's end. Fatigue 
generally begins, and is always increased, by calculat- 
ing in a minute the exertion of hours. 

Jane Taylor, England, 17S3-1S24. 



24. Amusements. 

It were unjust and ungrateful to conceive that the 
amusements of life are altogether forbid by its benefi- 
cent Author. They serve, on the contrary, important 
purposes in the economy of human life, and are des- 
tined to produce important effects, both upon our hap- 
piness and character. They are, in the first place, in 
the language of the Psalmist, "The wells of the 
desert; " the kind resting-places in which toil may 
relax, in which the weary spirit may recover its tone, 
and where the desponding mind may resume its 
strength and its hopes. It is not, therefore, the use 
of the innocent amusements of life which is danger- 
ous, but the abuse of them; it is not when they are 
occasionally, but when they are constantly pursued; 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 21 

when the love of amusements degenerates into a pas- 
sion; and when, from being an occasional indulgence, 
it becomes an habitual desire. 

A. Alison, England, 1792-1867. 



23. True Support. 

"When we have looked on the pleasures of life, and 
they have vanished away; when we have looked on 
the works of Nature, and perceived that they were 
changing; on the monuments of Art, and seen that 
they would not stand; on our friends, and they have 
fled while we were gazing; on ourselves, and felt that 
we were as fleeting as they, — we can look to the 
throne of God. Change and decay have never reached 
that. "The waves of an eternity have been rushing 
past it, but it has remained unshaken. The waves of 
another eternity are rushing toward it, but it is fixed, 
and can never be disturbed. 

F. W. P. Greenwood, Mass., 1797-1843. 

26. A Swedish Night, 

How beautiful is the summer night, which is not 
night, but a sunless, yet unclouded day, descending 
upon earth with dews, and shadows, and refreshing 
coolness! How beautiful the long, mild twilight, 
which, like a silver clasp, unites to-day with yester- 
day! How beautiful the silent hour, when morning 
and evening thus sit together, hand-in-hand, beneath 



22 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

the starless sky of midnight! From the church 
tower in the public square the bell tolls the hour, with 
a soft, musical chime; and the watchman, whose 
watch-tower is the "belfry, blows a blast in his horn 
for each stroke of the hammer; and four times to the 
four corners of the heavens, in a sonorous voice, he 
chants, — 

"Ho! watchman, ho! twelve is the clock! 
God keep our town from fire and brand, 
And hostile hand ! twelve is the clock ! " 

E. TV. Longfellow, Maine, 1S07— . 



27. Female Fortitude. 

I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude 
with which women sustain the most overwhelming 
reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break 
down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, 
seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, 
and give such intrepidity and devotion to their char- 
acter that, at times, it approaches to sublimity. 
Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft 
and tender female, who had been all weakness and 
dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness, 
while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly 
rising, in mental force, to be the comforter and sup- 
porter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding, 
with unshrinking firmness, the bitterest blasts of 
adversity. 

TV. Irving, New York, 17S3-1S59. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 23 



28. War. 



l\lj first wish, is to see this plague to mankind ban- 
ished from the earth, and the sons and daughters of 
this world employed in more pleasing and innocent 
amusements than in preparing implements and exer- 
cising them for the destruction of mankind. Rather 
than quarrel about territory, let the poor, the needy, 
and oppressed of the earth, and those who want land, 
resort to the fertile plains of our western country, the 
second land of promise, and there dwell in peace, ful- 
filling the first and great commandment. 

George Washington, Virginia, 1732-1799. 



29. True Living. 

Life is a bubble which any breath may dissolve; 
wealth or power a snowflake, melting momently into 
the treacherous deep across whose waves we are floated 
on to our unseen destiny; but to have lived so that 
cue less orphan shall be called to choose between 
starvation and infamy, to have lived so that some 
eyes of those whom Fame shall never know are 
brightened, and others suffused at the name of the 
beloved one, — so that the few who knew him truly 
shall recognize him as a bright, warm, cheering pres- 
ence, which was here for a season and left the world 
no worse for his stay in it, — this, surely, is to have 
really lived, — and not wholly in vain. 

Horace Greeley, New Hampshire, 1S11-1S72. 



24 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

SO. Books. 

Precious and priceless are the blessings which 
books scatter around our daily paths. We walk, in 
imagination, with the noblest spirits through the most 
sublime and enchanting regions, — regions which, to 
all that is lovely in the forms and colors of earth, 

"Add the gleam, 
The light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration and the poet's dream." 

A motion of the hand brings all Arcadia to sight. 
The war of Troy can, at our bidding, rage in the nar- 
rowest chamber. Without stirring from our firesides, 
we may roam the remotest regions of the earth, or 
soar into realms where Spencer's shapes of unearthly 
beauty flock to meet us, where Milton's angels peal in 
our ears the choral hymns of Paradise. 

E. P. Whipple, Mass., 1819. 

SI. The Love of Glory. 

In the growth of the individual the intellect 
advances before the moral powers; for it is necessary 
to know what is right before we can practice it; and 
this same order of progress is observed in the human 
family. Moral excellence is the bright, consummate 
flower of all progress. It is often the peculiar product 
of age. And it is there, among other triumphs of 
virtue, that Duty assumes her commanding place, 
while personal ambition is abased. Burke, in that 
marvelous passage of elegiac beauty, where he mourns 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 25 

his only son, says, "Indeed, my Lord, I greatly 
deceive myself if, in this hard season, I would give a 
peck of refuse wheat for all that is called Fame and 
Honor in the world." And Channing, with a senti- 
ment most unlike the ancient Roman orator, declares 
that he sees "Nothing worth living for but the divine 
virtue which endures and surrenders all things for 
truth, duty, and mankind." Such an insensibility to 
worldly objects, and such an elevation of spirit, may 
not be expected at once from all men, — certainly not 
without something of the trials of Burke or the soul 
of Channing. But it is within the power of all to 
strive after that virtue which it may be difficult to 
reach; and just in proportion as duty becomes the 
guide and the aim of life shall we learn to close the 
soul against the allurements of praise and the asperi- 
ties of censure, while we find satisfactions and com- 
pensations such as men cannot give or take away. 
The world, with ignorant or intolerant judgment, 
may condemn , the countenance of companion may be 
averted; the heart of friend may grow cold; but the 
consciousness of duty done will be sweeter than the 
applause of the world, than the countenance of com- 
panion, or the heart of friend. 

Cftas. Sumner, Mass., 1S11-1ST4. 



32. Truth and Falsehood. 

"When we are as yet small children there comes up 
to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes 
3 



26 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The 
cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written, in 
letters of gold — Truth. The spheres are veined and 
streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson 
flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a 
certain aspect you can make out upon every one of 
them the three letters, L-I-E. The child to whom 
they are offered very probably clutches at both. The 
spheres are the most convenient things in the world; 
they roll with the least possible impulse just where 
the child would have them. The cubes will not roll 
at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and 
always keep right side up. But very soon the young 
philosopher finds that things which roll so easily are 
very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out 
of his way when he most wants them, while he always 
knows where to find the others, which stay where 
they are left. Thus he learns — thus we learn — to 
drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood, 
and to hold fast the white, angular blocks of truth. 
But then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, 
and last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that Truth 
must roll, or nobody can do anything with it; and so 
the first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her 
broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so 
round off and smooth and polish the snow-white 
cubes of truth, that when they have got a little dingy 
by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling 
spheres of falsehood. 

0. W. Holmes, Mass., 1S09— . 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 27 

33. The True Hero. 

The true hero is the great, wise man of duty. — he 
whose soul is armed by truth and supported by the 
smile of God, — he who meets life's perils with a cau- 
tious but tranquil spirit, gathers strength by facing its 
storms, and dies, if he is called to die, as a christian 
victor at the post of duty. And if we must have 
heroes, and wars wherein to make them, there is no so 
brilliant war as a war with wrong, no hero so fit to be 
sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of 
truth and mercy. 

Horace Bushnell, Conn., 1802-1 876. 

34, Influence Lasting. 

The relations between man and man cease not with 
life. The dead leave behind them their memory, their 
example, and the effects of their actions. Their influ- 
ence still abides with us. Their names and characters 
dwell in our thoughts and hearts. "We live and com- 
mune with them in their writings. We enjoy the ben- 
efits of their labors. Our institutions have been founded 
by them. "We are surrounded by the works of the dead. 
Our knowledge and our arts are the fruit of their toil. 
Our minds have been formed by their instructions. 
We are most intimately connected with them by a 
thousand dependencies. Those whom we have loved 
are still objects of our deepest and holiest affections. 
Their power over us remains. They are with us in 
our solitary walks; and their voices speak to our 



28 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

hearts in the silence of midnight. Their image is 
impressed upon our dearest recollections and our most 
sacred hopes. They form an essential part of our 
treasures laid up in heaven. TVe are separated from 
them but for a little time. "We are soon to be united 
with them. If we follow in the path of those we 
have loved, we too shall soon join the innumerable 
company of the "spirits of just men made perfect." 

Andrews Norton, Mass., 1T86-1S53. 

35. Knowledge. 

Without knowledge there can be no sure progress. 
Vice and barbarism are the inseparable companions 
of ignorance. Nor is it too much to say that, except 
in rare instances, the highest virtue is attained only 
through intelligence. This is natural; for to do right 
we must first understand what is right. But the peo- 
ple of Greece and Rome, even in the "brilliant days of 
Pericles and Augustus, could not arrive at this knowl- 
edge. The sublime teachings of Plato and Socrates — 
calculated, in many respects, to promote the best inter- 
ests of the race — were limited, in influence, to a small 
company of listeners, or to the few who could obtain 
a copy of the costly manuscripts in which they were 
preserved. Thus the knowledge and virtue acquired 
by individuals were not diffused in their own age, or 
secured to posterity. 

Chas. Sumner, Mass., 1811-1874. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 29 

36. Charity. 

The little I have seen of the world, and known 
of the history of mankind, teaches me to look on the 
errors of others in sorrow, and not in anger. When 
I take the history of one poor heart, that has sinned 
and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles 
and temptations it has passed through; vicissitudes of 
hope and fear; the pressure of want; the desertion of 
friends; the scorn of a world that has little charity; 
the desolation of the mind's sanctuary; the threaten- 
ing voices within it; health gone; happiness gone; 
even hope, that remains the longest, gone, — I would 
fain lay the erring soul of my fellow-man tenderly in 
His hand from whom it came. 

H. TV. Longfellow, Maine, 1S0T-. 

37. A Gentleman, 

To be a gentleman does not depend upon the tailor 
or toilet. Good clothes are not good habits. A gen- 
tleman is just a gentle-man. — no more, no less; a dia- 
mond polished, that was first a diamond in the rough. 
A gentleman is gentle. A gentleman is modest. A 
gentleman is courteous. A gentleman is generous. 
A gentleman is slow to take offense, as being one that 
never gives it. A gentleman is slow to surmise evil, 
as being one that never thinks it. A gentleman goes 
armed only in consciousness of right. A gentleman 
subjects his appetites. A gentleman refines his tastes. 



30 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

A gentleman subdues his feelings. A gentleman 
deems every other better than himself. 

Bishop Doane, New Jersey, 1799-1859. 



38. Politeness. 

In politeness, as in many other things connected 
with the formation of character, people in general 
begin outside, when they should begin inside; instead 
of beginning with the heart, and trusting that to form 
the manners, they begin with the manners, and trust 
the heart to chance influences. The golden rule con- 
tains the very life and soul of politeness. Children 
may be taught to make a graceful courtesy, or a gen- 
tlemanly bow; but unless they have likewise been 
taught to abhor what is selfish, and always prefer 
another's comfort and pleasure to their own, their 
politeness will be entirely artificial, and used only 
when it is to their interest to use it. On the other hand, 
a truly benevolent, kind-hearted person will always be 
distinguished for what is called native politeness, 
though entirely ignorant of the conventional forms of 
society. 

Mrs. L. M. Child, Mass., 1S03— . 

39. Washington. 

The character of Washington is among the most 
cherished contemplations of my life. It is a fixed 
star in the firmament of great names, shining without 
twinkling or obscuration, with clear, steady, beneficent 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 31 

light. It is associated and "blended with all our reflec- 
tions on those things which are near and dear to us. 
If we think of the independence of our country, we 
think of him whose efforts were so prominent in 
achieving it; if we think of the Constitution which is 
over us, we think of him who did so much to estab- 
lish it, and whose administration of its powers is 
acknowledged to be a model for his successors. If 
we think of glory in the field, of wisdom in the cabi- 
net, of the purest patriotism, of the highest integrity, 
public and private, of morals without a stain, of 
religious feelings without intolerance, and without 
extravagance, the august figure of "Washington pre- 
sents itself as the personation of all these ideas. 

Daniel Webster, New Hampshire, 17S2-1S52. 



40: The Power of a Word. 

On words, on quibbles, if you please to call distinc- 
tions so, rest the axes of the intellectual world. A 
winged word has stuck ineradicably in a million 
hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout their 
pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny 
of nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom 
been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it 
dependent for all its future happiness. It is because 
a word is unsusceptible of explanation, or because 
they who employed it were impatient of any, that 
enormous evils have prevailed, not only against our 
common sense, but against our common humanity. 

W. 8. Landor, England, 1775-1864. 



32 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

41. Happiness in Memory. 

Mankind are always better for having been once 
happy; so that if you make them happy now, 3^ou 
make them so, twenty years hence, through the mem- 
ory of it. Childhood, passed with a mixture of 
rational indulgence, under fond and wise parents, 
diffuses over the whole of life a coloring of calm 
pleasure, and, even in extreme old age, is the last 
remembrance that time can erase from the mind of 
man. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is con- 
fined to the present moment. A man is the happier 
through life for having once made an agreeable tour, 
or lived for any length of time among a pleasant peo- 
ple, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent 
pleasure; and it is more probably the recollection of 
their past joys that contributes to render the aged so 
inattentive to the scenes passing around them, and 
carries them back to a world that is past, and scenes 
that can never be again restored. 

Sydney Smith, England, 1TT1-1S45. 



42. The Diffusion of Knowledge. 

Through an agency all unknown to Antiquity, knowl- 
edge of every kind has become general and permanent. 
It can no longer be confined to a select circle. It 
cannot be crushed by tyranny, or lost by neglect. It 
is immortal as the soul from which it proceeds. This 
alone renders all relapse into barbarism impossible, 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 33 

while it affords an unquestionable distinction between 
ancient and modern times. The Press, watchful with 
more than the hundred eyes of Argus, strong with 
more than the hundred arms of Briareus, not only 
guards all the conquests of civilization, but leads the 
way to future triumphs. Through its untiring ener- 
gies, the meditation of the closet, or the utterance of 
the human voice, which else would die away within 
the precincts of a narrow room, is prolonged to the 
most distant nations and times, with winged words 
circling the globe. We admire the genius of Demos- 
thenes, Sophocles, Plato, and Phidias; but the print- 
ing-press is a higher gift to man than the eloquence, 
the drama, the philosophy and the art of Greece. 

Charles Sumner, Mass., 1S11-1874. 

43. Books. 

Science, art, literature, philosophy, — all that man 
has done, — the experience that has been bought with 
the sufferings of a hundred generations, — all have 
been garnered up for us- in the world of books. 
There, among realities, in a "substantial world," we 
move with the crowned kings of thought. There our 
minds have a free range, our hearts a free utterance. 
Eeason is confined within none of the partitions 
which trammel it in life. The hard granite of con- 
ventionalism melts away as a thin mist. We call 
things by their right names. Our lips give not the 
lie to our hearts. We bend the knee only to the great 



34 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

and good. We despise only the despicable, we honor 
only the honorable. In that world no divinity hedges 
a king, no accident of rank or fashion ennobles a 
dunce or shields a knave. 

E. P. Whipple, Mass., 1819—; 

44, Erroneous Action. 

It is pity that, commonly, more care is had, yea, 
and that among very wise men, to find out rather a 
cunning man for their horse, than a cunning man for 
their children. They say nay in word, but do so in 
deed. For to the one they will gladly give a stipend 
of two hundred crowns by year, and loth to offer to 
the other two hundred shillings. God, that sitteth in 
heaven, laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth 
their liberality as it should; for He suffereth them to 
have a tame and well-ordered horse, but wild and un- 
fortunate children; and, therefore, in the end, they 
find more pleasure in their horse than comfort in their 
children. 

E. Ascham, England, 1515-156S. 

45. Intelligence. 

Education, to accomplish the ends of good govern- 
ment, should be universally diffused. Open the doors 
of the school-house to all the children of the land. 
Let no man have the excuse of poverty for not educating 
his own offspring. Place the means of education 
within his reach, and if they remain in ignorance, be 
it his own reproach. If one object of the expenditure 






CHOICE THOUGHTS. 35 

of revenue be protection against crime, you could not 
devise a better or cheaper means of obtaining it. 
Other nations spend their money in providing means 
for its detection and punishment, but it is for the 
principles of our government to provide for its never 
occurring. The one acts by coercion, the other by 
prevention. On the- diffusion of education among the 
people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our 
free institutions. 

D. Webster, New Hampshire, 17S2-1852. 

46. Nature. 

Nature has a thousand ways and means of rising 
above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifes- 
tations of her capability of color are in the sunsets 
among the high clouds. I speak especially of the 
moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns 
pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a zenith 
covered with countless forms of inconceivable delicacy, 
threads, and flakes of vapor, which would in common 
daylight be pure snow-white, and which give, there- 
fore, a fair field to the tone of light. There is then no 
limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity 
of the hues assumed. The whole sky, from the 
zenith to the horizon, becomes one molten, mantling 
sea of color and fire; every black bar turns massy 
gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless 
crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which 
there are no words in language and no ideas in the 
mind, — things which can only be conceived while 



36 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

they are visible, — the intense hollow blue of the 
upper sky melting through it all, — showing here deep, 
and pure, and lightless, — there modulated by the 
filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor till it is 
lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold. 

J. Buskin, England, 1819—. 



47. The Skeptic. 

Did the skeptic ever contemplate the landscape at 
the close of the year, when seed, and grains, and fruit 
have ripened, and stalks have withered, and leaves 
have fallen, and winter has forced her icy curb even 
into the roaring jaws of Niagara, and sheeted half a 
continent in her glittering shroud, and all this teeming 
vegetation and organized life are locked in cold and 
marble obstructions, and after week upon week, and 
month upon month, have swept, with sleet and chilly 
rain, and howling storm, over the earth, and riveted 
their crystal bolts upon the door of nature's sepulchre, — 
when the sun at length begins to wheel in higher cir- 
cles through the sky, and softer winds to breathe over 
melting snows, — did he ever behold the long-hidden 
earth at length appear, and soon the timid grass peep 
forth; and anon the autumnal wheat begin to paint 
the field, and velvet leaflets to burst from purple buds, 
throughout the reviving forest, and then the mellow 
soil to open its fruitful bosom to every grain and seed 
dropped from the planter's hand, — buried, but to 
spring up again, clothed with a new, mysterious being; 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 37 

then, as more fervid suns inflame the air, and softer 
showers distill from the clouds, and gentler dews 
string their pearls on twig and tendril, did he ever 
watch the ripening grain and fruit, pendent from stalk 
and vine and tree ; the meadow, the field, the pasture, 
the grove, each after his kind, arrayed in myriad- 
tinted garments, instinct with circulating life; seven 
millions of counted leaves on a single tree, each of 
which is a system whose exquisite complication puts 
to shame the shrewdest cunning of the human hand; 
every planted seed and grain, which had been loaned 
to the earth, compounding its pious usury thirty, sixty, 
a hundred fold, — all harmoniously adapted to the sus- 
tenance of living nature, the bread of a hungry 
world; here a tilled corn-field, whose yellow blades 
are nodding with the food of man; there an implanted 
wilderness, — the great Father's farm, — where He 
< ( who hears the raven's cry" has cultivated, with His 
own hand, His merciful crop of berries, and nuts, and 
acorns, and seeds, for the humbler families of animated 
nature; the solemn elephant, the browsing deer, the 
wild pigeon whose fluttering caravan darkens the sky, 
the merry squirrel, who bounds from branch to 
branch, in the joy of his little life, — has he seen ail 
this ? Does he see it every year, and month, and day ? 
Does he live, and move, and breathe, and think, in 
this atmosphere of wonder, — himself the greatest 
wonder of all, whose smallest fiber and faintest pulsa- 
tion is as much a mystery as the blazing glories of 
Orion's belt ? And does he still maintain that a mir- 



38 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

acle is contrary to experience ? If he has, and if he 
does, then let him go in the name of Heaven, and say- 
that it is contrary to experience that the august 
Power which turns the clods of the earth into the 
daily bread of a thousand million of souls could feed 
five thousand in the wilderness. 

E. Everett, Mass., 1794-1S65. 



48. Success. 

Every man must patiently abide his time. He 
must wait, not in listless, not in useless pastime, not 
in querulous dejection, but in constant, steady fulfilling 
and accomplishing his task; that when the occasion 
comes, he may be equal to the occasion. The talent 
of success is nothing more than doing what you can 
do well, without a thought of fame. If it come at all 
it will not come because it is sought after. It is a 
very indiscreet and troublesome ambition which cares 
so much about fame; about what the world says of 
us; to be always looking in the face of others for 
approval; to be always anxious about the effects of 
what we do or say; to be always shouting to hear the 
echoes of our own voices. 

IT. W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807— . 



49. Motive. 

In some respects our mental education resembles 
the system pursued by some of the ancient islanders 
of the Mediterranean. In order to teach their chil- 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 39 

dren the use of the bow and the art of war, they sus- 
pended their breakfast every morning from the bough 
of a tree, and made them shoot for it, well knowing 
that their hunger would sharpen their aim as well as 
their appetites. So a benevolent Providence, in order 
to impose upon us a similar necessity and motive for 
mental activity, has hung, not only our food, but the 
gratification of every sense, as it were, upon a tall 
tree, and taught our ideas to shoot for it, — or, without 
the figure, to think for it. 

Elihu Burritt, Conn., 1811— 

50. Books. 

Books, — light-houses erected in the great sea of 
Time, — books, the precious depositories of the thoughts 
and creations of genius, — books, by whose sorcery 
time past becomes time present, and the whole pagean- 
try of the world's history moves in solemn procession 
before our eyes, — these were to visit the firesides of 
the humble, and lavish the treasures of the intellect 
upon the poor. Could we have Plato, and Shake- 
speare, and Milton in our dwellings, in the full vigor 
of their imaginations, in the full freshness of their 
hearts, few scholars would be affluent enough to afford 
them physical support; but the living images of their 
minds are within the eyes of all. From their pages 
their mighty souls look out upon us in all their gran- 
deur and beauty, undimmed by the faults and follies 
of earthly existence, consecrated by time. 

K P. WnjypU, Mass., 1819—. 



40 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

51. The Gentle Charities of Life. 

A man's usefulness depends far more on the kind- 
ness of his daily temper than on great and glorious 
deeds that shall attract the admiration of the world, 
and that shall send his name down to future times. 
It is the little rivulet that glides through the meadow, 
and that runs along day and night by the farm-house, 
that is useful, rather than the swollen flood, or the 
noisy cataract. Niagara excites our wonder, and fills 
the mind with amazement and awe. We feel that 
God is there ; and it is well to go far to see, once at 
least, how solemn it is to realize that we are in the 
presence of the Great God, and to see what wonders 
His hand can do. But one Niagara is enough for a 
continent, or a world; while that same world needs 
thousands and tens of thousands of silvery fountains, 
and gently flowing rivulets, that shall water every 
farm, and every meadow, and every garden, and that 
shall flow on every day and every night with their 
gentle and quiet beauty. So with life. We admire 
the great deeds of Howard's benevolence, and wish 
that all men were like him. We revere the names of 
the illustrious martyrs. We honor the man who will 
throw himself in the "imminent deadly breach," and 
save his country, — and such men and such deeds we 
must have when the occasion calls for them. But all 
men are not to be useful in this way, any more than 
waters are to rush by us in swelling and angry floods. 
We are to be useful in more limited spheres. We are 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 41 

to cultivate the gentle charities of life. "We are, "by a 
consistent walk, to "benefit those around us, though we 
be in an humble vale, and though, like the gentle riv- 
ulet, we may attract little attention, and may soon 
cease to be remembered on earth. Kindness will 
always do good. It makes others happy, and that is 
doing good. It prompts us to seek to benefit others, 
and that is doing good. It makes others gentle and 
benignant, and that is doing good. 

Albert Barnes, New York, 1798-1870. 

52, Our Creator. 

"We are commanded to remember " our Creator in 
the days of our youth." The days of our youth are 
the days of our blessings. In those days we enter 
into life with a shower of Cod's blessings upon our 
heads; we come adorned with all the choicest gifts 
of the Almighty: with strength of body, with activity 
of limb, with health and vigor of constitution, with 
everything to fit us both for labor and enjoyment. If 
not endowed with sufficiency, endowed with what is 
better, — the power of obtaining it for ourselves by an 
honest and manly industry; with senses keen and 
observing; with spirits high, lively, and untamable, 
that shake off care and sorrow whenever they attempt 
to fasten upon our mind, and that enable us to make 
pleasure for ourselves where we do not find it, and to 
draw enjoyment and gratification from things in 
which they see nothing but pain, vexation, and dis- 
appointment. 

Chas. Wolfe, Ireland, 1791-1S23. 
4* 



42 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

S3. True Value. 

. It is not labor that makes things valuable, but their 
being valuable that makes them worth laboring for. 
And God 7 having judged, in His wisdom, that it is not 
good for man to be idle, has so appointed things, by 
His providence, that few of the things that are most 
desirable can be obtained without labor. It is 
ordained that man should eat bread in the sweat of 
his face; and almost all the necessary comforts and 
luxuries of life are obtained only by labor. 

R. Whately, England, 1787-1863: 

S4. Behind Time. 

The best laid plans, the most important affairs, the 
fortunes of individuals, the weal of nations, honor, 
life itself, are daily sacrificed because somebody is 
''behind time." There are men who always fail in 
whatever they undertake, simply because they are 
11 behind time." There are others who put off refor- 
mation year by year, till death seizes them, and they 
perish unrepentant, because for ever "behind time." 
Five minutes in a crisis is worth years. It is but a 
little period, yet it has often saved a fortune or 
redeemed a people. If there is one virtue that should 
be cultivated more than another by him who would 
succeed in life, it is punctuality; if there is one error 
that should be avoided, it is being " behind time." 

Freeman Hunt, Mass., 1S04-1S58. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 43 

BB. Education. 

Education is not confined to books alone. The 
world, with its thousand interests and occupations, is 
a great school. But the recorded experience and wis- 
dom of others may be of the greatest aid and benefit 
to us. We can look about us to-day and see many 
who have brought the light of that intelligence which 
has been the guiding-star of others to bear upon their 
own paths, and, by its aid, have achieved an enviable 
position among men. Honor lies in doing well what- 
ever we find to do; and the world estimates a man's 
abilities in accordance with his success in whatever 
business or profession he may engage. 

J. T. Trowbridge, New York, 1827—. 

56. The Land of Song. 

Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature, when 
transfigured by the miraculous power of poetry ; hamlets 
and harvest-fields, and nut-brown waters, flowing even 
under the forest, vast and shadowy, with all the sights 
and sounds of rural life. But, after all, what are 
these but the decorations and painted scenery in the 
great theater of human life ? What are they but the 
coarse materials of the poet's song ? Glorious, indeed, 
is the world of God around us, but more glorious the 
world of God within us. There lies the land of song; 
there lies the poet's native land. 

H. W, Longfellow, Maine, 1807—. 



44 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

S7. The Heavens Near Dawn. 

It was a mild, serene, mid-summer night; the sky 
was without a cloud, the winds were whist. The 
moon, in her last quarter, had just risen, and the stars 
shone with a spectral luster, but little affected by her 
presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of 
the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed 
their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near 
the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly-discovered 
glories from the naked eye in the South; the steady 
pointers, far "beneath the pole, looked meekly up from 
the depths of the North to their sovereign. 

Such was the glorious spectacle as 1 entered the 
train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twi- 
light became more perceptible; the intense blue of the 
sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little chil- 
dren, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleia- 
des soon melted together; but the bright constellations 
of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily 
the wondrous transfigurations went on. Hands of 
angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery 
of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved in the 
glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more 
softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy 
eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of pur- 
ple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial 
concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the 
morning light, which came pouring down from above 
in one great ocean of radiance; till, at length, as we 






CHOICE THOUGHTS. 45 

reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed 
out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy 
tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and dia- 
monds. In a few seconds the everlasting gates of the 
morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, 
arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, 

began his state. 

Edward Everett, Mass., 1TO4-1S65. 

58. The Best Books. 

The books which help you most are those which 
make you think most. The hardest way of learning 
is by easy reading; but a great book that comes from 
a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted 
with truth and with beauty. 

Theo. Parker, Mass., 1S10-1860. 

59. Character. 

The crown and glory of life is character. It is the 
noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in 
itself, and an estate in the general good-will; dignify- 
ing every station, and exalting every position in so- 
ciety. It exercises a greater power than wealth, and 
secures all the honor without the jealousies of fame. 
It carries with it an influence which always tells, — for 
it is the result of proud honor, rectitude, and consis- 
tency, — qualities which, perhaps, more than any other, 
command the general confidence and respect of man- 
kind 

S. Smiles, England. 1816- 



46 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 



60. A True Life. 



A true life must be simple in all its elements. 
Animated by one grand and ennobling impulse, all 
lesser aspirations find their proper places in harmoni- 
ous subservience. Simplicity in taste, in appetite, in 
habits of life, with a corresponding indifference to 
worldly honors and aggrandisement, is the natural 
result of the predominance of a divine and unselfish 
idea. Under the guidance of such a sentiment, virtue 
is not an effort, but a law of nature, like gravitation. It 
is vice alone that seems unaccountable, monstrous, 
well-nigh miraculous. 

Horace Greeley, New Hampshire, 1811-1872. 

61. Washington. 

While we commend the character and example of 
Washington to others, let us not forget to imitate it 
ourselves. The two great leading principles of his 
policy should be remembered and cherished. Those 
principles were, — first, the most complete, cordial, and 
indissoluble union of the States; and second, the 
most entire separation and disentanglement of our 
own country from all other countries. Perfect union 
among ourselves, perfect neutrality toward others, 
and peace, peace, domestic peace, and foreign peace 
as the result; this was the chosen and consummate 
policy of the Father of his country. 

B. C. Winthrop, Mass., 1809—. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 47 

62. Genius. 

It is nothing less than the possession of all the 
powers and impulses of humanity, in their greatest 
possible strength and most harmonious combination; 
and the genius of any particular man is great in pro- 
portion as he approaches this ideal of universal 
genius. Conceive of a mind in which the powers of 
Napoleon and Howard, Dante and Newton, Luther 
and Shakspeare, Kant and Fulton, were so combined 
as to act in perfect harmony; a mind vital in every 
part, conceiving everything with intensity, and yet 
conceiving everything under its due relations, as 
swift in its volitions as in its thoughts, — conceive of 
a mind like this, and you will have a definition of 
genius. 

E. P. Whipple, Mass., 1813—. 



63. Language. 

Language *s the amber in which a thousand precious 
thoughts have been safely imbedded and preserved. 
It has arrested ten thousand lightning-flashes of 
genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might 
have been as bright, but would also have been as 
quickly passing and perishing as the lightning. 
Words convey the mental treasures of one period to 
the generations that follow; and laden with this, their 
precious freight, they sail safely across gulfs of time 
in which empires have suffered shipwreck, and the 
languages of common life have sunk into oblivion. 

R. C. Trench, England, 1S07— . 



48 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

64. Fortitude and Perseverance. 

The great art of life, so far as I have been able to 
observe, consists in fortitude and perseverance. I 
have rarely seen that a man who conscientiously 
devoted himself to the studies and duties of any pro- 
fession, and did not omit to take fair and honorable 
opportunities of offering himself to notice when such 
presented themselves, has not at length got forward. 
The mischance of those who fall behind, though flung 
upon fortune, more frequently arises from want of 
skill and perseverance. Life, young friends, is like a 
game at cards; our hands are alternately good or bad, 
and the whole seems, at first glance, to depend on 
mere chance. But it is not so, for in the long run 
the skill of the player predominates over the casual- 
ties of the game. Therefore, do not be discouraged 
with the prospect before you, but ply your studies 
hard, and qualify yourselves to receive fortune when 
she comes your way. 

W. Scott, Scotland, 1771-1832. 

6B. The Beautiful Unappreciated. 

Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see 
its walls lined with the choicest pictures of Raphael, 
and every spare nook filled with statues of the most 
exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn that 
neither man, woman, nor child ever cast an eye at 
these miracles of art, how should I feel their priva- 
tion! how should I want to open their eyes, and to 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 49 

help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and 

grandeur which in vain courted their notice! 

But every husbandman is living in sight of the 

works of a divine Artist, and how much would his 

existence be elevated, could he see the glory which 

shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and 

moral expression! 

W. E. Charming, R. L, 1780-1842. 



66. Eternity. 

The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old 
and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, 
but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of eternity. 

Bishop Heoer, England, 1783-1826. 

67. The Present Hour. 

One of the illusions is that the present hour is not 
the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart 
that every day is the best day in the year. 

B. W. Emerson, Mass., 1803—. 

68. Cheerfulness, 

A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will 
make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and 
wit good-natured. It will lighten sickness, poverty, 
and affliction, convert ignorance into an amiable sim- 
plicity, and render deformity itself agreeable. 

Jos. Addison, England, 1672-1719. 



50 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

69. Family Courtesy. 

Family intimacy should never make brothers and 
sisters forget to be polite and sympathizing to each 
other. Those who contract thoughtless and rude 
habits toward members of their own family will be 
rude and thoughtless to all the world. But let the 
family intercourse be true, tender, and affectionate, 
and the manners of all uniformly gentle and consid- 
erate, and the members of the family, thus trained, 
will carry into the world and society the habits of 
their childhood. They will require in their associates 
similar qualities; they will not be satisfied without 
mutual esteem and the cultivation of the best affec- 
tions; and their own character will be sustained by 
that faith in goodness which belongs to a mind exer- 
cised in pure and high thoughts. 

Silvio Pettico, Italy, 1789-1854. 

70. Death. 

"When death strikes down the innocent and young, 
for every fragile form from which he sets the panting 
spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, 
charity, and love, to walk the world and bless it. Of 
every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green 
graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. 
In the destroyer's steps there spring up bright crea- 
tions that defy his power, and his dark path becomes 
a way of light to heaven. 

Chas. Dickens, England, 1812-1870. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 51 

71. The True Man. 

ISTo man can safely go abroad that does not love to 
stay at home; no man can safely speak that does not 
willingly hold his tongue; no man can. safely govern 
that would not cheerfully become subject; no man 
can safely command that has not truly learned to 
obey; and no man can safely rejoice but he that has 
the testimony of a good conscience. 

Tlws. a Kempis, Germany, 1380-1 471. 

72. Submission. 

If God send thee a cross, take it up willingly and 
follow Him. Use it wisely, lest it be unprofitable. 
Bear it patiently, lest it be intolerable. If it be light, 
slight it not. If it be heavy, murmur not. After the 
cross is the crown. 

F. Quarks, England, 1592-1644. 

73. True Greatness. 

It is by what we ourselves have done, and not what 
others have done for us, that we shall be remembered 
by after ages. It is thought that has aroused intellect 
from its slumbers, which has given "luster to virtue, 
and dignity to truth," or by those examples which 
have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness, and 
not by means of -sculptured marble, that we hold 
communion with Shakspeare and Milton, with John- 
son and Burke, with Howard and Wilberforce. 

Francis Waykind, New York, 1796-1865. 



52 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

74. The Humming Bird. 

Where is the person who, on observing this glitter- 
ing fragment of the rainbow, would not pause, ad- 
mire, and instantly turn his mind with reverence 
towards the Almighty Creator, the wonders of whose 
hand we, at every step, discover, and of whose sub- 
lime conceptions we everywhere observe the manifes- 
tations in His admirable system of creation. 

J. J. Audubon, Louisiana, 1780-1851. 

76. A New England Summer. 

Take the New England climate, in summer; you 
would think the world was coming to an end. Certain 
recent heresies on that subject may have had a natural 
origin there. Cold to-day; hot to-morrow; mercury 
at 80 degrees in the morning, with wind at southwest; 
and in three hours more a sea-turn, wind at east, a 
thick fog from the very bottom of the ocean, and a 
fall of forty degrees of Fahrenheit; now so dry as to 
kill all the beans in New Hampshire; then floods, 
carrying off the bridges of the Penobscot and Con- 
necticut; snow in Portsmouth in July; and the next 
day a man and a yoke of oxen killed by lightning in 
Rhode Island. One would think the world was 
twenty times coming to an end! But I don't know 
how it is; we go along; the early and the latter rain 
falls, each in its season; seed-time and harvest do not 
fail; the sixty days of hot, corn weather are pretty 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 53 

sure to be measured out to us. The Indian Summer, 
with its bland southwest, and mitigated sunshine, 
brings all up; and on the 25th of November, or 
thereabouts, being Thursday, millions of grateful 
people, in meeting-houses or around the family board, 
give thanks for a year of health, plenty, and happiness. 
Bufus Choate, Mass., 1799-1869. 

76. General Intelligence, 

"When the means of education everywhere through- 
out our country shall be as free as the air we breathe ; 
when every family shall have its Bible ; then, and not 
till then, shall we exert our proper influence on the 
cause of man; then, and not till then, shall we be 
prepared to stand forth between the oppressor and the 
oppressed, and say to the proud wave of domination : 
" Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." 

Francis Wayland, New York, 1198-1865. 

77, The True Monument. 

No arch nor column in courtly English, or courtlier 
Latin, sets forth the deeds and the worth of the 
Father of his country; he needs them not; the un- 
written benediction of millions cover all the walls.* 
No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch 
the morning or evening beam; but the love and grati- 
tude of united America settle upon it in one eternal 
sunshine. 

Ediv. Everett, Mass., 1794-1865. 
* At Mt. Vernon. 



54 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

78. Beauty. 

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every 
natural action is graceful. Every heroic action is 
also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders 
to shine. 

R. W. Emerson, Mass., 1S03— . 

79. Benevolence, 

How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse 
pleasure all around him; and how truly is a kind 
heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in 
its vicinity to freshen into smiles. 

W. Irving, New York, 17S3-1S59. 

80. Light and Sunshine 

Don't keep a solemn parlor, into which you go but 

once a month with your parson or sewing society. 

Hang around your walls pictures, which shall tell 

stories of mercy, hope, courage, faith, and charity. 

Make your living room the largest and most cheerful 

in the house. Let the place be such that when your 

boy has gone to distant lands, or even when, perhaps, 

he clings to a single plank in the lone waters of the 

wide ocean, the thought of the still homestead shall 

come across the desolation, bringing always light, 

hope, and love. Have no dungeon about your house, 

no room you never open, no blinds that are always 

shut. 

Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel), Conn., 182a-. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 55 

81. Greatness Promoted. 

A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst 
he sits on the cushion of advantages he goes to sleep. 
When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a 
chance to learn something; he has been put on his 
wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his 
ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has 
got moderation and real skill. The wise man always 
throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is 
more to his interest than it is theirs to find his weak 
point. The wound cicatrizes, and falls off from him 
like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo, 
he has passed on invulnerable. As long as all that is 
said is against me, I feel a certain assurance of suc- 
cess. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are 
spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected 

before his enemies. 

B. W. Emerson, Mass., 1803—.. 

82. Good Advice. 

Be careful that you do not commend yourselves. 
It is a sign that your reputation is small and sinking 
if your own tongue must praise you; and it is fulsome 
and unpleasing to others to hear such commendations. 
Speak well of the absent whenever you have a suita- 
ble opportunity. Never speak ill of them, or any- 
body, unless you are sure they deserve it, and unless 
it is necessary for their amendment or for the safety 
and benefit of others. 

Sir Matthew Hale> England, 1609-1676. 



56 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

83. Mount Washington. 

I have been something of a traveler in our own 
country, — though far less than I could wish, — and in 
Europe have seen all that is most attractive, from the 
Highlands of Scotland to the Golden Horn of Con- 
stantinople, — from the summit of the Hartz Mountains 
to the Fountain of Vancluse, — but my eye is yet to 
rest on a lovelier scene than that which is discovered 
from Mount Washington, when, on some clear, cool, 
summer's morning, at sunrise, the cloud-curtain is 
drawn up from nature's grand proscenium, and all that 
chaos of wildness and beauty starts into life, — the bare, 
gigantic tops of the surrounding heights: the pre- 
cipitous gorges a thousand fathoms deep, which foot 
of man or ray of light never entered; — the somber- 
matted forest, — the moss-clad rocky wall weeping with 
crystal springs, — winding streams, gleaming lakes, and 
peaceful villages below, — and in the dim, misty dis- 
tance, beyond the lower hills, faint glimpse of the sa- 
cred bosom of the eternal deep, ever heaving as with 
the consciousness of its own immensity, — all mingled 
in one indescribable panorama by the hand of the 
Divine Artist. 

Echo. Everett, Mass., 1794-1S65. 

84. How to be Remembered. 

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are 
dead, either write things worth reading or do things 
worth writing. 

B. FranMin, Mass., 1706-1790. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 57 



80. True Living 



God has written upon the flower that sweetens the 
air, upon the breeze that rocks the flower on its 
stem, upon the rain-drops which swell the mighty- 
river, upon the dew-drop that refreshes the smallest 
sprig of moss that rears its head in the desert, upon 
the ocean that rocks every swimmer in its chambers, 
upon every penciled shell that sleeps in the caverns 
of the deep, as well as upon the mighty sun which 
warms and cheers the millions of creatures that live 
in its light, — upon all hath he written, " None of us 

liveth to himself" 

John Todd, Vermont, 1S00-1872. 



86. Education. 

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a 

standing army. If we retrench the wages of the 

schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting 

sergeant. 

E. Everett, Mass., 1794-1865. 



87. Pride. 

Pride is as loud a beggar as Want, and a great 
deal more saucy. "When you have bought one fine 
thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance 
may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the 
first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. 

.2. Franklin, Mass., 1706-1790. 



58 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

88. A Christian's Life. 

A Christian man's life is laid in the loom of time to 
a pattern which he does not see, but God does; and 
his heart is a shuttle. On one side of the loom is 
sorrow, and on the other is joy; and the shuttle, 
struck alternately by each, flies back and forth, carry- 
ing the thread, which is white or black, as the pattern 
needs; and, in the end, when God shall lift up the 
finished garment, and all the changing hues shall 
glance out, it will then appear that the deep and dark 
colors were as needful to beauty as the bright and 

high colors. 

E. W. Beecher, Conn., 1813—. 

89. Intemperance. 

The depopulating pestilence that walketh at noon- 
day, the carnage of cruel and devastating war, can 
scarcely exhibit their victims in a more terrible array 
than exterminating drunkenness. I have seen a 
promising family spring from a parent trunk, and 
stretch abroad its populous limbs, like a flowering 
tree, covered with green and healthy foliage. I have 
seen the unnatural decay beginning upon the yet ten- 
der leaf, and gnawing like a worm in an unopened 
bud, while they dropped off, one by one, and the 
scathed and ruined shaft stood desolate and alone, 
until the winds and rains of many a sorrow laid that, 
too, in the dust. 

W. Irving, New York, 1783-1859. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 59 

90. Happiness. 

Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of 
heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, 
and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror, 
transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever- 
shining benevolence. 

Washington filing, New Tork, 17S3-1859. 

91. Christianity. 

The real security of Christianity is to be found in 
its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to 
the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme 
accommodates itself to the capacity of every human 
intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house 
of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the 
great mystery of the grave. 

T. B. Macaulay, England, 1S00-1S59. 

92. Profaneness. 

Profaneness is a low, groveling vice. He who in- 
dulges it is no gentleman. I care not what his stamp 
may be in society, — I care not what clothes he wears 
or what culture he boasts, — despite all his refinement, 
the light and habitual taking of God's name in vain 
betrays a coarse nature and a brutal will. 

E. H. Chapin, New York, 1814—. 



60 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

93. Labor. 

Labor hews down the gnarled oak, shapes the tim- 
ber, builds the ship, and guides it over the deep, 
plunging through the billows, and wrestling with the 
tempest, to bear to our shores the produce of every 
clime. Labor brings us India spices and American 
cotton; African ivory and Greenland oil; fruits from 
the sunny South, and furs from the frozen North; tea 
from the East, and sugar from the "West; carrying, in 
exchange, to every land, the products of industry and 
skill. Labor, by the universally-spread ramifications 
of trade, distributes its own treasures from country to 
country, from city to city, from house to house, con- 
veying to the doors of all the necessaries and luxuries 
of life; and, by the pulsations of an untrammeled 
commerce, maintaining healthy life in the great social 
system. 

Newman Hall, England, 1S16— . 

94. A Kind Act. 

Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a 
child, for there is no saying when and where it may 
again bloom forth. Does not almost every one 
remember some kind-hearted man who showed him a 
kindness in the days of his childhood ? The writer 
of this recollects himself at this moment as a bare- 
footed lad, standing at the wooden fence of a poor 
little garden in his native village. With longing eyes 
he gazed on the flowers which were blooming there 



CHOICE THOUGHTS, 61 

quietly in the "brightness of a Sunday morning. The 
owner came forth from his little cottage; he was a 
wood-cutter "by occupation, and spent the whole week 
at work in the woods. He had come into the garden 
to gather flowers to stick in his coat when he went to 
church. He saw the boy, and, breaking on 2 the most 
beautiful of his carnations, gave it to him. Neither 
giver nor receiver spoke a word, and with bounding 
steps the boy ran home. And now, at a distance 
from that home, after so many events and so many 
years, the feeling of gratitude which agitated the 
breast of that boy expresses itself on paper. The 
carnation has long since withered, but it now blooms 
afresh. 

Douglas Jerrcld, England, 1803-1857. 

95. Rectitude. 

Let it be proclaimed in every school that there are 
original, immutable, and indestructible maxims of 
moral rectitude, — great lights in the firmament of the 
soul,— which no circumstances can affect, no sophistry 
obliterate. That to this eternal standard every indi- 
vidual of the race is bound to conform, and that by it 
the conduct of every man shall be adjudged. Let it 
be proclaimed that dishonesty, fraud, and falsehood 
are as despicable and criminal in the most exalted 
stations as in the most obscure, in politics as in busi- 
ness. That the demagogue who tells a he to gain a 
Vote is as infamous as the peddler who tells one to 
gain a penny. 

Newton Bateman, New Jersey, 1822—. 



62 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

96. Charity. 

The charities of life are scattered everywhere, en- 
ameling the vales of human beings as the flowers 
paint the meadows. They are not the fruit of study, 
nor the privilege of refinement, but a natural instinct. 

Geo. Bancroft, Mass., 1S0O— . 

97. Energy. 

Nothing great or good can be accomplished without 
labor and toil. Motion is the law of living nature. 
Inaction is the symbol of death, if it is not death 
itself. The hugest engines, with strength and capacity 
sufficient to drive the mightiest ships across the stormy 
deep, are utterly useless without a moving power. 

Energy is the steam-power, the motive principle of 
intellectual capacity. It is the propelling force; and 
as in physics momentum is resolvable into velocity 
and quantity of matter, so in metaphysics, the extent 
of human accomplishment may be resolvable into the 
degree of intellectual endowment and the energy with 
which it is directed. A small body driven by a great 
force will produce a result equal to, or even greater 
than, that of a much larger body moved by a consid- 
erably less force. So it is with minds. Hence we 
often see men of comparatively small capacity, by 
greater energy alone, leave, and justly leave, their 
superiors in natural gifts far behind them in the race 
for honors, distinction, and preferment. 

Alexander II. Step/tens, Georgia, 1813—. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 63 



3. June. 



This is the year's bower. Sit down within it. 
Wipe from thy brow the toil. The elements are thy 
servants. The dews bring thee jewels. The winds 
bring perfume. The earth shows thee all her treasure. 
The forests sing to thee. The air is all sweetness, as 
if all the angels of God had gone through it, bearing 
spices homeward. The storms are but as flocks 
of mighty birds that spread their wings and sing in 
the high heaven. Speak to God now, and say, "0 
Father! where art thou? " and out of every flower, 
and tree, and silver pool, and twined thicket, a voice 
will come, " God is in me." The earth cries to the 
heavens, " God is here! " The sea claims Him. The 
land hath Him. His footsteps are upon the deep. 
He sitteth upon the circle of the earth. sunny joys 
of the sunny month, yet soft and temperate, how 
soon will the eager months that come burning from 
the iiiquator scorch you! 

H. W. Beecher, Conn., 1813—. 

99. My Library. 

In my garden I spend my days; in my library I 
spend my nights. My interests are divided between 
my geraniums and" my books. "With the flowers I 
am in the present; with the books I am in the past. 
I go into my library and all history unrolls before 
me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the 
scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it 



64 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightin- 
gales, and to the laugh of Eve. 

I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings 
of the armies of Alexander; I feel the ground shake 
beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a thea- 
ter, — the stage is time, the play is the world. What 
a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp! what proces- 
sions file past! what cities burn to heaven, what crowds 
of captives are dragged at the chariot-wheels of con- 
querors! 

Alex. Smith, Scotland, 1830-1867. 

lOO. True Reading. 

Reading without purpose is sauntering, not exercise. 
More is got from one book on which the thought 
settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from 
libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cot- 
tage flower gives honey to the bee, — a king's garden 
none to the butterfly. 

Lord Lyttoriy England, 1805-1873. 



PART II -POETRY. 



1. The Voyage of Life. 

Life is a sea. — as fathomless, 
As wide, as terrible, and yet sometimes 
As calm and beautiful. The light of heaven 
Smiles on it, and 'tis decked with every hue 
Of glory and of joy. Anon dark clouds 
Arise, contending winds of fate go forth, 
And Hope sits weeping o'er a general wreck. 
And thou must sail upon this sea, a long 
Eventful voyage. The wise may suffer wreck, . 
The foolish must. 

0! then be early wise! 
Learn from the mariner his skillful art 
To ride upon the waves, and catch the breeze, 
And dare the threatening storm, and trace a path 
'Mid countless dangers, to the destined port, 
Unerringly secure. ! learn from him 
To station quick-eyed Prudence at the helm, 
To guard thy sails from Passion's sudden blasts, — 
And make Eeligion thy magnetic guide, 
"Which, though it trembles as it lowly lies, 
Points to the light that changes not, — in Heaven. 

Henry Ware, Jr., Mass., 1794-1843. 

6* 



66 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

2. Be Patient. 

Be patient! oh, be patient! Put your ear against the 

earth! 
Listen there how noiselessly the germ o' the seed has 

"birth, — 
How noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way, 
Till it parts the scarcely broken ground, and the blade 

stands up in day. 

Be patient! oh, be patient! The germs of mighty 
thought 

Must have their silent undergrowth, — must under- 
ground be wrought; 

But as sure as there's a Power that makes the grass 
appear, 

Our land shall be green with liberty, the blade-time 
shall be here. 

Be patient! oh, be patient! — go and watch the wheat- 
ears grow, 

So imperceptibly that we can mark nor change nor 
throe, — 

Day after day, day after day, till the ear is fully grown; 

And then again day after day, till the ripened field is 
brown. 

Be patient! oh, be patient! — though yet our hopes are 

green, 
The harvest-fields of freedom shall be crowned with 

sunny sheen. 
Be ripening! be ripening! — mature your silent way, 
Till the whole broad land is tongued with fire on free- 

dom's harvest day. 

R. C. Trench, England, 1807—. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 67 



3. Life. 



The shortest life is longest, if 'tis best; 
'Tis ours to work, — to God belongs the rest. 
Our lives are measured by the deeds we do, 
The thoughts we think, the objects we pursue. 
A fair young life poured out upon the sod, 
In the high cause of freedom and of God, 
Though all too short his course and quickly run, 
Is full and glorious as the orbed sun; 
While he who lives to hoary -headed age 
Oft dies an infant, — dies and leaves no sign; 
For he has writ no deed on history's page, 
And unfulfilled is being's great design. 

Anon. 

4. Passing Away, 

I asked the stars in the pomp of night, 
Gilding its blackness with crowns of light, 
Bright with beauty and girt with power, 
Whether eternity were not their dower; — 
And dirge-like music stole from their spheres, 
Bearing this message to mortal ears: — 
" We have no light that hath not been given; 
We have no strength but shall soon be riven; 
We have no power wherein man may trust; 
Like him are we, — things of time and dust, 
And the legend we blazon with beam and ray, 
And the song of our silence is 'Passing away.' " 
Maria J. Jewsiury, England, 1800-1833. 



68 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

5. Good Advice. 

In reading authors, when you find 

Bright passages that strike your mind, 

And which, perhaps, you may have reason 

To think on at another season, 

Be not contented with the sight, 

But take them down in black and white; 

Such a respect is wisely shown 

That makes another's sense one's own. 

In conversation, when you meet 
With persons cheerful and discreet, 
That speak, or quote, in prose or rhyme, 
Things or facetious or sublime, 
Observe what passes, and anon, 
When you come home think thereupon; 
Write what occurs, forget it not, 
A good thing saved 's a good thing got. 

Notes and Queries. 

6. True Living. 

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. 
And he whose heart beats quickest lives longest; 
Lives in one hour more than years do some 
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins. 
Life is but a means to an end, — that end, — 
Beginning, mean, and end to all things, — God. 

P. J. Bailey, England, 1816— . 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 69 

7. Thought. 

Companion, none is like 

Unto the mind alone, 
For many have been harmed by speech, — 

Through thinking, few, or none. 
Fear oftentimes restraineth words, 

But makes not thoughts to cease; 
And he speaks best that hath the skill 

When for to hold his peace. 

Our wealth leaves us at death, 

Our kinsmen at the grave ; 
But virtues of the mind 

Unto the heavens with us we have; 
Wherefore, for virtue's sake, 

I can be well content, 
The sweetest time of all my life 

To deem in thinking spent. 

Thomas Yaicx, England, 1510-1557. 

8. God's Love. 

There's not a flower that decks the vale, 

There's not a beam that lights the mountain, 
There's not a shrub that scents the gale, 

There's not a wind that stirs the fountain, 
There's not a hue that paints the rose, 

There's not a leaf around us lying, 
But in its use or beauty shows 

True love to us, and love undying. 

Gerald Griffin, Ireland, 1803-1S40. 



70 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

9. Cultivation. 

Weeds grow unasked, and even some sweet flowers 
Spontaneous give their fragrance to the air, 
And bloom on hills, in vales, and everywhere, 
As shines the sun, or fall the summer showers, — 
But wither while our lips pronounce them fair! 
Flowers of more worth repay alone the care, 
The nurture, and the hopes of watchful hours; 
While plants most cultured have most lasting powers. 
So flowers of genius that will longest live, 
Spring not in Mind's uncultured soil, 
But are the birth of time and mental toil, 
And all the culture Learning's hand can give. 
Fancies, like wild flowers, in a night may grow; 
But thoughts are plants whose stately growth is slow. 
Mrs. E. C. Kinney, America . 

10. Twilight. 

There is an evening twilight of the heart, 

When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest, 
And the eye sees life's fairy scenes depart, 

As fades the day-beam in the rosy west. 
'Tis with a nameless feeling of regret 

We gaze upon them as they melt away, 
And fondly would we bid them linger yet, 

But Hope is round us with her angel lay, 
Hailing afar some happier moonlight hour; 
Dear are her whispers still, though lost their early 

power. 

F. G. Halleck, Conn., 1795-1867. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 71 

11. The Rainy Day. 

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary; 
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 
But at every gust the dead leaves fall, 
And the day is dark and dreary. 

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; . 
It rains, and the wind is never weary; 
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, 
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, 
And the day is dark and dreary. 

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; 
Thy fate is the common fate of all, — 
Into each life some rain must fall, 
Some days must be dark and dreary. 
H, w. . 



12. God. 

In its sublime research, philosophy 

May measure out the ocean-deep,— may count 

The sands or the sun's rays, — but God! for Thee 

There is no weight nor measure; none can mount 

Up to Thy mysteries; Reason's brightest spark, 

Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try 

To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark; 

And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, 

Even like past moments in eternity. 

G. E. Derzhavin, Russia, 1743-1816. 



72 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 



13. The Seasons. 



These, as they change, Almighty Father, these 
Are but the varied God. The rolling year 
Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing spring 
Thy "beauty walks, thy tenderness and love. 
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; 
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles, 
And every sense and every heart is joy. 
Then comes thy glory in the Summer months, 
"With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun 
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year; 
And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks, 
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, 
By brooks and groves in hollow-whispering gales. 
Thy beauty shines in Autumn unconfined, 
And spreads a common feast for all that lives. 
In Winter, awful thou! with clouds and storms 
Around thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled; 
Majestic darkness! On the whirlwind's wing 
Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore, 
And humblest nature with thy northern blast. 

Jas. Thomson, England, 1700-1748. 

14. Five Things. 

If Wisdom's ways you'd wisely seek, 
Five things observe with care; 

Of whom you speak, to whom you speak, 
And how and when and where. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 73 

IS. Example. 
We scatter seeds with careless hand, 

And dream we ne'er shall see them more; 
But for a thousand years 
Their fruit appears, 
In weeds that mar the land, 

Or healthful store. 
The deeds we do, the words we say, — 
Into still air they seem to fleet, 
We count them ever past; 
But they shall last, — 
In the dread judgment they 

And we shall meet! 
I charge thee, "by the years gone by, 
For the love's sake of brethren dear, 
Keep thou the one true way, 
In work and play, 
Lest in that world their cry 
Of woe thou hear. 

John Keble, England, 1793-1866. 

16. The Difference. 
Some murmur when their sky is clear, 

And wholly bright to view, 
If one small speck of dark appear 

In their great heaven of blue ; 
And some with thankful love are filled, 

If but one streak of light, 
One ray of God's good mercy, gild 

The darkness of their night. 

E. C. Trench, England, 1807—. 



74 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

17. The Living Temple. 

Not in the world of life alone, 

"Where God has built his blazing throne, 

Nor yet alone in earth below, 

With belted seas that come and go, 

And endless isles of sunlit green, 

Is all thy Maker's glory seen: 

Look in upon thy wondrous frame,— 

Eternal wisdom still the same! 

Oliver W. Holmes, Mass., 1809—. 

18. Labor. 

Labor is life! 'Tis the still water faileth; 

Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth; 

Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth; 

Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon. 
Labor is glory! the flying cloud lightens; 
Only the waving wing changes and brightens; 
Idle hearts only the dark future frightens; 

Play the sweet keys, would'st thou keep them in 
tune! 
Labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us, 
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us, 
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us, 

Rest from world- sirens that lure us to ill. 
"Work, — and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow; 
Work, — thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow; 
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willov ! 

W r ork with a stout heart and resolute will! 

Frances S. Osgood, Mass., 1813-JioO. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 75 

19. The Tempest 

'Tis pleasant, "by the cheerful hearth, to hear 
Of tempests, and the dangers of the deep, 
And pause at times, and feel that we are safe; 
Then listen to the perilous tale again, 
And, with an eager and suspended soul, 
Woo Terror to delight us: — hut to hear 
The roaring of the raging elements, — 
To know all human skill, all human strength 
Avail not, — to look 'round, and only see 
The mountain- wave, incumbent with its weight 
Of bursting waters o'er the reeling bark, — 
God! this is indeed a dreadful thing! 
And he who hath endured the horror, once, 
Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm 
Howl round his home, but he remembers it, 
And thinks upon the suffering mariner. 

EoM. Soutliey, England, 1774-1S43. 

20. Faith. 

Better trust all and be deceived, 
And weep that trust and that deceiving, 
Than doubt one heart that if believed 
Had blessed one's life with true believing. 

0, in this mocking world too fast 

The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth; 

Better be cheated to the last 

Than lose the blessed hope of truth. 

Frances A. KemNe, England, 1811—. 



76 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

21. Poetry. 

The world is full of Poetry, — the air 
Is living with its spirit; and the waves 
Dance to the music of its melodies, 
And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veiled. 
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls 
That close the universe with crystal in, 
Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim 
The unseen glories of immensity, 
In harmonies, too perfect, and too high 
For aught but beings of celestial mould, 
And speak to man, in one eternal hymn, — 
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power. 

Jas. G. Perdval, Conn., 1795-1856. 

22. Memory. 

They are poor 
That have lost nothing ; they are poorer far 
"Who, losing, have forgotten; they most poor 
Of all, who lose and wish they might forget. 
For life is one, and in its warp and woof 
There runs a thread of gold that glitters fair, 
And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet 
"When there are somber colors. It is true 
That we have wept. But ! this thread of gold, 
"We would not have it tarnish; let us turn 
Oft and look back upon the wondrous web, 
And when it shineth sometimes, we shall know 
That memory is in possession. 

Jean Tn/rdoir, England, 1S30— . 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 77 

23. A Twilight Picture. 

The twilight deepened round ns. Still and black 

The great woods climbed the mountain at our back : 

And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day 

On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, 

The brown old farm-house like a bird's nest hung. 

With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred: 

The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard, 

The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well, 

The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell; 

Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate 

Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight 

Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung, 

The welcome sound of supper-call to hear; 

And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear, 

The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung. 

J. G. Whittier, Mass., 1808. 

24. Knowledge and Wisdom. 

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, 
Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men; 
"Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, 
The mere materials with which Wisdom builds, 
Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, 
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. 
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, 
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. 

Wm. Coi.cper, England, 1731-1800. 
7* 



78 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

2B. Wisdom. 

Ah.! when did Wisdom covet length, of days, 
Or seek its bliss in pleasure, wealth, or praise ? 
No: Wisdom views, with an indifferent eye, 
All finite joys, all blessings born to die; 
The soul on earth is an immortal guest, 
Compelled to starve at an unreal feast; 
A spark which upward tends by nature's force, 
A stream diverted from its parent source; 
A drop dissevered from the boundless sea; 
A moment parted from eternity; 
A pilgrim panting for a rest to come, 
An exile anxious for his native home. 

Hannah More, England, 1745-1S33. 

26. Time. 

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time 

But from its loss : to give it then a tongue 

Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, 

I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, 

It is the knell of my departed hours. 

Where are they ? With the years beyond the flood. 

It is the signal that demands despatch: 

How much is to be done ! My hopes and fears 

Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge 

Look down — on what ? A fathomless abyss ! 

A dread eternity! how surely mine! 

And can eternity belong to me, 

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour ? 

Edw. Young, England, 1684-1765. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 79 

27. The Gain of Adversity. 

A lily said to a threatening cloud 

That in sternest garb arrayed him, 
"You have taken my lord, the Sun, away 

And I know not where you have laid him." 

It folded its leaves, and trembled sore 
As the hours of darkness pressed it, 

But at morn, like a bird, in beauty shone 
For with pearls the dews had dressed it. 

Then it felt ashamed of its fretful thought, 

And fain in the dust would hide it, 
For the night of weeping had jewels brought, 

Which the pride of day denied it. 

Mrs. L. H. jSigourney, Conn., 1791-1865. 

28. Duty and Right. 

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, 

And blench not at thy chosen lot; 
The timid good may stand aloof, 

The sage may frown, — yet faint thou not, 
Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, 

The foul and hissing bolt of scorn; 
For with thy side shall dwell, at last, 

The victory of endurance born. 
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; 

The eternal years of God are hers; 
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 

And dies among her worshipers. 

W. C. Bryant, Mass., 1794—. 



80 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

29. The Rainbow. 

There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives 
"Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves, — 
When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose, 
Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose, 
And thus when the rainbow has passed from the sky, 
The thoughts it awakes are too deep to pass by; 
It leaves my full soul, like the wing of a dove, 
All fluttering with pleasure and fluttering with love. 

I know that each moment of rapture or pain 
But shortens the links in life's mystical chain; 
I know that my form, like the bow from the wave, 
Must pass from the earth, and lie cold in the grave; 
Yet, oh! when Death's shadows my bosom encloud, 
When I shrink at the thought of the coffin and shroud, 
May Hope, like the rainbow, my spirit enfold 
In her beautiful pinions of purple and gold. 

Amelia B. Welby, Maryland, 1821-1852. 

30. Earnest Workers. 

The busy world shoves angrily aside 

The man who stands with arms akimbo set, 

Until occasion tells him what to do; 

And he who waits to have his task marked out, 

Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. 

Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds: 

Reason and Government, like two broad seas, 

Yearn for each other with outstretched arms 

Across their narrow isthmus of the throne, 

And roll their white surf higher every day. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 81 

One age moves onward, and the next builds up 
Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood 
The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild, 
Rearing from out the forests they had felled 
The goodly frame-work of a fairer state ; 
The builder's trowel and the settler's ax 
Are seldom wielded by the self same hand; 
Ours is the harder task, yet not the less 
Shall we receive the blessing for our toil 
From the choice spirits of the after -time. 

Russell Lowell, Mass., 1819—. 

31. The Guilty Conscience. 

The mind that broods o'er guilty woes 

Is like the scorpion girt by fire; 
In circle narrowing as it glows, 
The flames around their captive close ; 
Till, inly searched by thousand throes, 

And maddening in her ire, 
One, and a sole relief she knows; 
The sting she nourished for her foes — 
Whose venom never yet was vain, 
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain — 
She darts into her desperate brain. 
So do the dark in soul expire, 
Or live like scorpion girt by fire; 
So writhes the mind remorse has riven, 
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven; 
Darkness above, despair beneath— 
Around it flame, within it death. 

Lord Byron, England, 178S-1S24. 



82 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

32. The Cost of Success. 

Few know of life's beginning; men behold 
The goal achieved; — the warrior, when his sword 
Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun; 
The poet, — when his lyre hangs on the palm; 
The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice, 
And mould opinion on his gifted tongue: 
They count not life's first steps, and never think 
Upon the many miserable hours 
When hope deferred was sickness to the heart. 
They reckon not the battle and the march, 
The long privations of a wasted youth; 
They never see the banner till unfurled. 
What are to them the solitary nights 
Passed pale and anxious by the sickly lamp, 
Till the young poet wins the world at last 
To listen to the music long his own? 
The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind 
That makes their destiny; but they do not trace 
Its struggle, or its long expectancy. 
Hard are life's early steps ; and, but that youth 
Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, 
Men would behold its threshold, and despair. 

L. E. Landon, {Letitia E. Maclean,) England, 1802-1839. 

33. True Philosophy. 

With sweet flowers opening on thy sight daily, 
Sing as the birds sing, gladly and gayly. 
Think not of autumn sere, winter's grim shadows; 
Sing as the birds sing over the meadows. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 83 

See what the hour reveals fairly and truly, — 
Not what the cloud conceals, hut the cloud duly. 
Think every common day is a good granted; 
Hail every trial sent as a tree planted. 

Paint not the tempest's hour till it close o'er thee, 
Trust not to Fancy's power, — have it before thee. 
Seen its aurora-gleams, felt its dark terror, 
Then to thy work proceed, fearless of error. 

God sendeth naught in vain, gladness or sorrow : 
Strength giveth of its gain, weakness must borrow. 
Tempest and summer rain give the tree stature; 
Each one who skulks the pain narrows his nature. 

Anon. 

34. The Weaver. 

Little they think, the giddy and the vain, 

"Wandering at pleasure 'neath the shady trees, 
While the light glossy silk or rustling train 

Shines in the sun or nutters in the breeze, 
How the sick weaver plies the incessant loom, 

Crossing in silence the perplexing thread, 
Pent in the confines of one narrow room, 

Where droops complainingly his cheerless head; 
Little they think with what dull, anxious eyes, 

Nor by what nerveless, thin, and trembling hands, 
The devious mingling of those various dyes 

"Were wrought to answer Luxury's commands: 
But the day cometh when the tired shall rest, — 
YvTiere weary Lazarus leans his head on Abraham's 
breast! 

Mrs. C. K S. Norton, England, 1808-1877. 



84 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

35. Dying Thoughts. 

And in my dying hour, 
When riches, fame, and honor have no power 

To bear the spirit up, 
Or from my lips to turn aside the cup 

That all must drink at last, 
0, let me draw refreshment from the past! 

Then let my soul run back, 
"With peace and joy, along my earthly track, 

And see that all the seeds 
That I have scattered there, in virtuous deeds 

Have sprung up, and have given, 
Already, fruits of which to taste is heaven! 

And though no grassy mound 
Or granite pile say 'tis heroic ground 

Where my remains repose, 
Still will I hope — vain hope, perhaps! — that those 

Which I have striven to bless, 
The wanderer reclaimed, the fatherless, 

May stand around my grave, 
With the poor prisoner, and the poorer slave, 

And breathe an humble prayer, 
That they may die like him whose bones are mould- 
ering there. 

John Pierpont, Conn., 1785-1866. 

36. A Good Life. 
He liveth long who liveth well; 

All else is life but flung away; 
He liveth longest who can tell 

Of true things truly done each day. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 85 

Then fill each hour with what will last; 

Buy up the moments as they go: 
The life above, when this is past, 

Is the ripe fruit of life below. 

Sow love, and taste its fruitage pure; 

Sow peace, and reap its harvest bright; 

Sow sunbeams on the rock and moor, 

And find a harvest-home of light. 

Anon. 

37. Philanthropy. 
Abotj Ben Adhem (may Iris tribe increase!) 
Awoke one night from a dream of peace, 
And saw within the moonlight in his room, 
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, 
An angel writing in a book of gold : 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 
And to the presence in the room he said, — 
" What writest thou ? " — The vision raised its head, 
And, with a look made of all sweet accord, 
Answered, " The names of those who love the Lord.' ; 
" And is mine one ? " said Abou. " Nay, not so," 
Replied the angel. — Abou spoke more low, 
But cheerly still, — and said, "I pray thee, then, 
"Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." 

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night 

It came again, with a great wakening light, 

And showed the names whom love of God had 

blessed, — 
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 

Leigh Hunt, England, 1784-1859. 



86 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

38. The Moss Rose. 

The angel of the flowers, one day, 

Beneath a rose-tree sleeping lay, — 

That spirit to whose charge 'tis given 

To bathe young buds in dews of heaven, 

Awaking from his light repose, 

The angel whispered to the rose: 

" fondest object of my care, 

Still fairest found, where all are fair; 

For the sweet shade thou giv'st me, 

Ask what thou wilt, 'tis granted thee." 

"Then," said the rose, with deepened glow, 

" On me another grace bestow." 

The spirit paused, in silent thought, — 

What grace was there the flower had not? 

'Twas but a moment, — o'er the rose 

A veil of moss the angel throws, 

And robed in nature's simplest weed, 

Could there a flower that rose exceed? 

F. A. Frnmmacher, Germany, 1768-1845. 



39. Neglected Opportunity. 

There is a tide in the affairs of men, 

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 

Omitted, all the voyage of their life 

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries. 

On such a full sea are we now afloat: 

And we must take the current when it serves, 

Or lose our ventures. 

W. Shakespeare, England, 1564-1616. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 87 

40. Disaster. 
Never stoops the soaring vulture 
On his quarry in the desert, 
On the sick or wounded bison, 
But another vulture, watching 
From his high aerial lookout, 
Sees the downward plunge, and follows; 
And a third pursues the second, 
Coming from the invisible ether, 
First a speck, and then a vulture, 
Till the air is dark with pinions. 
So disaster comes not singly; 
But as if they watched and waited, 
Scanning one another's motions, 
When the first descends, the others 
Follow, follow, gathering flock -wise 
Bound their victim, sick and wounded, 
First a shadow, then a sorrow, 
Till the air is dark with anguish. 

II W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807—. 

41. 

Some feelings are to mortals given, 

"With less of earth in them than heaven ; 

And if there be a human tear 

From passion's dross refined and clear, 

A tear so limpid and so meek 

It would not stain an angel's cheek, — 

'Tis that which pious fathers shed 

Upon a duteous daughter's head. 

W. Scott, Scotland, 1771-1832. 



88 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

42. Ignorance May be Bliss. 

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate 

All but the page prescribed, their present state; 

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know, 

Or who could suffer being here below ? 

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 

Had he thy reason, would he skip and play ? 

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, 

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. 

blindness to the future! kindly given, 

That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven; 

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, 

A hero perish or a sparrow fall; 

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, 

And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 

Hope humbly, then, with trembling pinions soar; 

Wait the great teacher, Death; and God adore. 

What future bliss, He gives not thee to know, 

But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. 

Hope springs eternal in the human breast; 

Man never is, but always to he blest; 

The soul, uneasy and confined from home, 

Rests and expatiates in a hfe to come. 

A. Pope, England, 16SS-1744. 

43. How to Rise. 

Heaven is not gained at a single bound; 
But we build the ladder by which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 

And we mount to its summit round by round. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 89 

I count this thing to be grandly true, 
That a noble deed is a step toward God, 
Lifting the soul from the common sod 

To a purer air and a broader view. 

"We rise by things that are 'neath our feet; 

By what we have mastered of good and gain; 

By the pride deposed and the passion slain, 
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. 

J. G. Holland, Mass., 1819—. 

44. An Alpine Storm. 

The sky is changed! — and such a change! Oh night, 
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, 
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light 
Qf a dark eye in woman! Far along 
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, 
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, 
But every mountain now hath found a tongue, 
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, 
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! 

And this is in the night: — most glorious night! 
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be 
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight — 
A portion of the tempest and of thee! 
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, 
And now again 'tis black — and now, the glee 
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, 
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. 

Lord Byron, England, 17SS-1S24. 



90 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

46. Seek Only the Good. 

The "honey-bee that wanders all day long 
The field, the woodland, and garden o'er, 
To gather in his fragrant winter store, 
Humming in calm content his quiet song, 
Seeks not alone the rose's glowing breast, 
The lily's dainty cup, the violet's lips; 
But from all rank and noisome weeds he sips 
The single drop of sweetness ever pressed 
Within the poison chalice. Thus, if we 
Seek only to draw forth the hidden sweet 
In all the varied human flowers we meet 
In the wide garden of humanity, 
And, like the bee, if home the spoil we bear, 
Hived in our hearts, it turns to nectar there. 

Anne C. Lynch (Botta), Vermont, . « 

46. All may Attain Essential Knowledge 
The primal duties shine aloft, like stars; 
The charities that soothe and heal and bless, 
Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers ; 
The generous inclination, the just rule, 
Kind wishes, and good actions, and pure thoughts,— 
No mystery is here; no special boon 
For high and not for low, for proudly-grand 
And not for meek of heart. The smoke ascends 
To heaven as lightly from the cottage hearth 
As from the haughty palace. He whose soul 
Ponders this true equality may walk 
The fields of earth with gratitude and hope. 

Wm. Wordsworth, England, 1770-1850. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 91 

47. The Passing of Time. 

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 

To the last syllable of recorded time, 

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, 

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 

And then is heard no more; it is a tale 

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

Signifying nothing. 

W. Shakespeare, England, 1564-1616. 

48. Nature. 
Pleasant were many scenes, but most to me 
The solitude of vast extent, untouched 
By hand of art, where Nature showed herself, 
And reaped her crops, whose garments were the clouds; 
"Whose minstrels, brooks; whose lamps, the moon and 

stars; 
"Whose organ-choir, the voice of many waters; 
Whose banquets, morning dews; whose heroes, storms; 
Whose warriors, mighty winds; whose lovers, flowers; 
Whose orators, the thunderbolts of God; 
Whose palaces, the everlasting hills; 
Whose ceiling, heaven's unfathomable blue; 
And from whose rocky turrets, battled high, 
Prospect immense spread out on all sides round. 
Lost now between the welkin and the main, 
Now walled with hills that slept above the storm. 

Robert Pollok, England, 1799-1827. 



92 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

49. Time's Importance. 

On all important time, through every age, 

Though much, and warm, the wise have urged; the 

man 
Is yet unborn who duly weighs an hour. 
"I've lost a day," — the prince who nobly cried, 
Had been an emperor without his crown; 
Of Eome ? say rather lord of human race ! 
He spoke as if deputed by mankind. 
So should all speak: so reason speaks in all: 
From the soft whispers of that God in man, 
"Why fly to folly, why to frenzy fly 
For rescue from the blessings we possess ? 
Time, the supreme ! Time is eternity; 
Pregnant with all eternity can give; 
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile. 
Who murders Time, he crushes in the birth 
A power ethereal, only not adored. 

Edw. Young, England, 1684-1765. 

50. Lowly Worth. 

Some love the glow of outward show, 

The shine of wealth, and try to win it; 
The house to me may lowly be, 

If I but like the people in it. 
What's all the gold that glitters cold 

When linked to hard and haughty feeling ? 
Whate'er we're told, the noblest gold 

Is truth of heart and honest feeling. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 93 

A humble roof may give us proof 

That simple flowers are often fairest; 
And trees whose bark is hard and dark 

May yield us bloom and fruit the rarest I 
There's worth as sure among the poor 

As e'er adorned the highest station; 
And minds as just as theirs, we trust, 

Whose claim is but of rank's creation ! 
Then let them seek, whose minds are weak, 

Mere fashion's smile and try to win it; 
The house to me may lowly be, 

If I but like the people in it ! 

Chas. Swain, England, 1803— . 

51. The Grasshopper and Cricket. 

The poetry of earth is never dead ; 

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: 

That is the grasshopper's, — he takes the lead 

In summer luxury, — he has never done 

With his delights; for, when tired out with fun, 

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 

The poetry of earth is ceasing never. 

On a lone winter evening, when the frost 

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills 

The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, 

And seems, to one in drowsiness half lost, 

The grasshopper's among some grassy hills. 

John Keats, England, 1796-1821. 



94 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

32. The Rhodora.* 

In May, when sea- winds pierced our solitudes, 
I found the fresh rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook: 
The purple petals fallen in the pool 

Made the black waters with their beauty gay; 

Here might the red -bird come his plumes to cool, 

And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky, 
Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then beauty is its own excuse for being. 

"Why thou wert there, rival of the rose ! 
I never thought to ask; I never knew, 

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 
The self -same Power that brought me there, brought 
you. 

E. W. Emerson, Mass., 1803—. 

53. The Lilies. 

Lo, the lilies of the field, 
How their leaves instruction yield ! 
Hark to Nature's lesson, given 
By the blessed birds of heaven ! 
Every bush and tufted tree 
Warbles sweet philosophy: 
Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow; 
God provideth for the morrow ! 

* On beinsr asked whence this flower. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 95 

Say, with richer crimson glows 
The kingly mantle than the rose ? 
Say, have kings more wholesome fare 
Than we, poor citizens of air ? 
Barns nor hoarded grain have we, 
Yet we carol merrily. 
Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow: 
God provideth for the morrow. 

One there lives, whose guardian eye 
Guides our humble destiny; 
One there lives who, Lord of all, 
Keeps our feathers lest they fall: 
Pass we blithely, then, the time, 
Fearless of the snare and lime, 
Free from doubt and faithless sorrow: 
God provideth for the morrow. 

Bishop B. Heber, England, 1783-1826. 

64. Trial and Hope. 

As when a sudden storm of hail and rain 
Beats to the ground the yet unbearded grain, 
Think not the hopes of harvest are destroyed, 
On the flat field, and on the naked void; 
The light, unloaded stem, from tempests freed 
Will raise the youthful honors of its head; 
And soon, restored by native vigor, bear 
The timely product of the bounteous year. 

Nor yet conclude all fiery trials past; 
For heaven will exercise us to the last; 



8 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

Sometimes will check us in our mid career, 
"With, doubtful "blessings and with mingled fear, 
That, still depending on his daily grace, 
His every mercy for an alms may pass; 
With sparing hands will diet us to good, 
Preventing surfeits of our pampered blood. 
So feeds the mother-bird her craving young, 
"With little morsels, and delays them long. 

Dryden, England, 1631-1700. 

55. The Angel of Patience. 

To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 
God's meekest Angel gently comes: 
No power has he to banish pain, 
Or give us back our lost again; 
And yet in tenderest love our dear 
And heavenly Father sends him here. 

There's quiet in that Angel's glance, 

There's rest in his still countenance ! 

He mocks no grief with idle cheer, 

Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear; ) 

But ills and woes he may not cure, 

He kindly trains us to endure. 

Angel of Patience ! sent to calm 
Our feverish brows with cooling palm; 
To lay the storms of hope and fear, 
And reconcile life's smile and tear; 
The throbs of wounded pride to still, 
And make our own our Father's will ! 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 97 

thou who mournest on the way, 
With longings for the close of day; 
He walks with thee, that Angel kind, 
And gently whispers, " Be resigned ! " 
Bear np, bear on, the end shall tell 
The dear Lord ordereth all things well. 

John Greerdeaf Whittier, Mass., 1808—. 

56. The Angler. 
But look! o'er the fall see the angler stand, 
Swinging his rod with skillful hand; 

The fly at the end of his gossamer line 

Swims through the sun like a summer moth, 

Till, dropt with a careful precision fine, 
It touches the pool beyond the froth. 
A-sudden the speckled hawk of the brook 
Darts from his covert and seizes the hook. 
Swift spins the reel; with easy slip 
The line pays out, and the rod, like a whip, 
Lithe and arrowy, tapering, slim, 
Is bent to a bow o'er the brooklet's brim, 
Till the trout leaps up in the sun, and flings 
The spray from the flash of his finny wings, 
Then falls on his side, and, drunken with fright, 

Is towed to the shore like a staggering barge, 

Till beached at last on the sandy marge, 
"Where he dies with the hues of the morning light, 
While his sides with a cluster of stars are bright. 
The angler in his basket lays 
The constellation, and goes his ways. 

o Thomas Buchanan Bead, Penn.. 1S22— . 



98 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

67. Home. 

But where to find that happiest spot below, 
Who can direct, when all pretend to know ? 
The shudd'ring tenant of the frigid zone 
Boldly proclaims that spot his own; 
Extols the treasures of his stormy seas, 
And his long nights of revelry and ease: 
The naked negro, panting at the line, 
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, 
Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, 
And thanks his God for all the good they gave. 
Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam, 
His first, best country, ever is at home. 
And yet, perhaps, if countries we compare, 
And estimate the blessings which they share, 
Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find 
An equal portion dealt to all mankind; 
As different good, by art or nature given, 
To different nations makes their blessings even. 

Oliver Goldsmith, Ireland, 1728-1TT4. 

58. Virtue. 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky, 
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night, — 
For thou must die. 

Sweet Bose, whose hue, angry and brave, 
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, 
Thy root is ever in its grave, — 
And thou must die. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 99 

Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
A box where sweets compacted lie, 
My music shows ye have your closes, 
And all must die. 

Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 
Like seasoned timber, never gives; 
But though the whole world turn to coal, 
Then chiefly lives. 

2 Herbert, England, 1593-1632. 



69. Old Age. 

As the barometer foretells the storm 

While still the skies are clear, the weather warm, 

So something in us, as old age draws near, 

Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. 

The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, 

Descends the elastic ladder of the air; 

The tell-tale blood in artery and vein 

Sinks from its higher levels in the brain; 

"Whatever poet, orator, or sage 

May say of it, old age is still old age. 

It is the waning, not the crescent moon, 

The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon: 

It is not strength, but weakness; not desire, 

But its surcease: not the fierce heat of fire, . 

The burning and consuming element, 

But that of ashes and of embers spent, 

In which some living sparks we still discern, 

Enough to warm, but not enough to burn. 



100 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say 
The night hath come; it is no longer day? 
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite 
Cut off from labor by the failing light; 
Something remains for us to do or dare; 
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; 
Not (Edipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, 
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode 
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn, 
But other something, would we but begin; 
For age is opportunity no less 
Than youth itself, though in another dress, 
And as the evening twilight fades away 
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. 

II. W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807—. 

60. Good Counsel. 

Give thy thoughts no tongue, 
Nor any unproportioned thought his act. 
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. 
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; 
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware 
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, 
Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. 
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice : 
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. 
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 101 

For the apparel oft proclaims the man; 
And they in France, of the best rank and station, 
Are most select and generous, chief in that. 
Neither a borrower nor a lender be : 
For loan oft loses both itself and friend; 
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. 
This above all, — to thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee. 

Wm. SMkspeare, England, 1564-1616. 



61. A Sunset. 

I saw a glory in the ethereal deep; 

A glory such as from the higher heavens 
Must have descended. Earth does never keep 

In its embrace such beauty. Clouds were driven, 
As by God's breath, into unearthly forms, 

And then did glow, and burn with living flames, 
And hues so bright, so wonderful and rare, 

That human language cannot give them names; 
And light and shadow strangely linked their arms 

In loveliness; and all continual were 
In change; and with each change came new charms. 

Nor orient pearls, nor flowers in glittering dew, 
Nor golden tinctures, nor the insect's wings, 

Nor purple splendors for imperial view, 
Nor all that art or earth to mortals brings, 

Can e'er compare with what the skies unfurled. 
9* 



102 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

These are the wings of angels, I exclaimed, 
Spread in their mystic beauty o'er the world. 
Be ceaseless thanks to God that, in His love, 
He gives such glimpses of the world above, 
That we, poor pilgrims, on this darkling sphere, 
Beyond its shadows may our hopes uprear. 

Thomas Cole, England, 1G97— . 

62. Exertion Essential. 

By ceaseless action all that is subsists. 

Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel 

That Nature rides upon, maintains her health, 

Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads 

An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves: 

Its own revolvency upholds the world. 

"Winds from all quarters agitate the air, 

And fit the limpid element for use, 

Else noxious, oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, 

All feel the freshening impulse, and are cleansed 

By restless undulation. E'en the oak 

Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm: 

He seems indeed indignant, and to feel 

The impression of the blast with proud disdain, 

Frowning, as if in his unconscious arm 

He held the thunder ; but the monarch owes 

His firm stability to what he scorns, 

More fixed below, the more disturbed above. 

The law, by which all creatures else are bound, 

Binds man, the lord of all. 

Wm. Cowper, England, 1731-1800. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 103 

63. Truth. 

Truth, is eternal, "but her effluence, 
With endless- change, is fitted to the hour; 
Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect 
The promise of the future, not the past. 
He who would win the name of truly great 
Must understand his own age and the next, 
And make the present ready to fulfill 
Its prophecy, and with the future merge 
Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave. 
The future works out great men's destinies; 
The present is enough for common souls, 
"Who, never looking forward, are indeed 
Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age 
Are petrified for ever; better those 
"Who lead the blind old giant by the hand 
From out the pathless desert where he gropes, 
And set him onward in his darksome way. 
I do not fear to follow out the truth, 
Albeit along the precipice's edge. 
Let us speak plain: there is more force in names 
Than most men dream of, and a lie may keep 
Its throne a whole age longer if it skulk 
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name. 
Let us call tyrants tyrants, and maintain 
That only freedom comes by grace of God, 
And all that comes not by His grace must fall; 
For men in earnest have no time to waste 
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth. 

J. Russell Loivell, Mass., 1819—. 



104 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

64. Life. 

When sanguine youth the plain of life surveys, 

It does not calculate on rainy days; 

Some, as they enter on the unknown way, 

Expect large troubles at a distant day, — 

The loss of wealth, or friends they fondly prize; 

But reckon not on ills of smaller size, — 

Those nameless, trifling ills, that intervene, 

And people life, infesting every scene; 

And these, with silent, unavowed success, 

"Wear off the keener edge of happiness : 

Those tearing swarms, that buzz about our joys 

More potent than the whirlwind that destroys; 

Potent with heavenly teaching, to attest 

Life is a pilgrimage, and not a rest. 

That lesson learned aright is valued more 

Than all Experience ever taught before; 

For this her choicest secret, timely given, 

Is wisdom, virtue, happiness, and heaven. 

Long is religion viewed, by many an eye, 

As wanted more for safety by-and-by, 

A thing for times of danger and distress, 

Than needful for our present happiness. 

But after fruitless, wearisome assays 

To find repose and peace in other ways, 

The sickened soul, — when Hearen imparts its 

grace, — 
Returns to seek its only resting place; 
And sweet Experience proves as years increase, 
That Wisdom's ways are pleasantness and peace. 
Jane Taylor, England, 1783-1834. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 105 

63. The Mountains. 

Howe'er the wheels of Time go round, 

"We cannot wholly be discrowned. 

We bind, in form, and hue and height, 

The Finite to the Infinite, 

And, lifted on our shoulders bare, 

The races breathe an ampler air. 

The arms that clasped, the lips that kissed, 

Have vanished from the morning mist; 

The dainty shapes that flashed and passed 

In spray the plunging torrent cast, 

Or danced through woven gleam and shade, 

The vapors and the sunbeam's braid, 

Grow thin and pale : each holy haunt 

Of gods or spirits ministrant 

Hath something lost of ancient awe; 

Yet from the stooping heavens we draw 

A beauty, mystery, and might, 

Time cannot change nor worship slight. 

The gold of dawn and sunset sheds 

Unearthly glory on our heads; 

The secret of the skies we keep; 

And whispers, round each lonely sleep, 

Allure and promise, yet withhold, 

What bard and prophet never told. 

While Man's slow ages come and go 

Our dateless chronicles of snow 

Their changeless old inscription show. 

And men therein for ever see 

The unread speech of Deity. 

Bayard Taylor, Penn , 



106 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

66. The Soul's Emblem. 

A cloud lay cradled near the setting sun ; 

A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow; 
Long had I watched the glory moving on 

O'er the still radiance of the lake below. 
Tranquil its spirit seemed, and floated slow ; 

E'en in its very motion there was rest, 
While every breath of eve, that chanced to blow, 

"Wafted the traveler to the beauteous west; — 
Emblem, methought, of the departed soul, 

To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given, 
And by the breath of mercy made to roll 

Right onward to the golden gates of heaven; 
Where, to the eye of faith, it peaceful lies, 

And tells to man his glorious destinies. 

John Wilson, Scotland, 1785-1851 

67. Sunset. 

Low walks the sun, and broadens by degrees, 

Just o'er the verge of day. The shifting clouds 

Assembled gay, a richly gorgeous train, 

In all their pomp attend his setting throne. 

Air, earth, and ocean smile immense. And now, 

As if his weary chariot sought the bowers 

Of Amphitrite and her tending nymphs, 

(So Grecian fable sung,) he dips his orb; 

Now half immersed ; and now a golden curve 

Gives one bright glance, then total disappears. 

Jas. Thomson, England, 1700-1748. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 107 

68. Happiness. 

True happiness had no localities, 
No tones provincial, no peculiar garb. 
Where Duty went, she went, with justice went, 
And with Meekness, Charity, and Love. 
"Where'er a tear was dried, a wounded heart 
Bound up, a bruised spirit with the dew 
Of sympathy anointed, or a pang 
Of honest suffering soothed, or injury 
Eepeated oft, as oft by love forgiven; 
"Where'er an evil passion was subdued, 
Or virtue's feeble embers fanned ; where'er 
A sin was heartily abjured and left; 
"Where'er a pious act was done, or breathed 
A pious prayer, or wished a pious wish; 
There was a high and holy place, a spot 
Of sacred light, a most religious fane, 
"Where Happiness, descending, sat and smiled. 

Eobt. PoUoTc, England, 1799-1S27. 

69. Memory's Power. 

Let Fate do her worst, there are relics of joy, 
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy. 
They come in the night-time of sorrow and care, 
And bring back the features that joy used to wear. 

Long, long, be my heart with such memories filled, 
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled; 
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, 
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still. 

Thomas Moore, Dublin, 1779-1852. 



108 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

70. The Mind. 

For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich; 
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, 
So honor peereth in the meanest habit. 
"What! is the jay more precious than the lark; 
Because his feathers are more beautiful? 
Or is the adder better than the eel, 
Because his painted skin contents the eyes ? 
Oh no, good friend : neither art thou the worse 
For this poor furniture and mean array. 

Vr r m. Shakespeare, England, 1564-1616. 



71. The Sabbath Morning. 

TTith silent awe I hail the sacred morn, 

That slowly wakes while all the fields are still! 
A soothing calm on every breeze is borne; 

A graver murmur gurgles from the rill, 

And echo answers softer from the hill; 
And softer sings the linnet from the thorn; 

The sky-lark warbles in a tone less shrill. 
Hail, light serene! hail, sacred sabbath morn ! 
The rooks float silent by, in airy drove; 

The sun a placid yellow luster throws ; 
The gales that lately sighed along the grove, 

Have hushed their downy wings in dead repose; 
The hovering rack of clouds forgets to move; 

So smiled the day when the first morn arose! 

John Leyden, Scotland, 1775-1S11. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 109 

72. Morning's Music. 

But who the melodies of morn can tell? — 
The wild brook babbling down the mountain's side; 

The lowing herd ; the sheepf old's simple bell ; 
The pipe of early shepherd, dim descried 

In the low valley; echoing far and wide, 
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above ; 

The hollow murmur of the ocean-tide; 
The hum of bee; the linnet's lay of love; 

And the full choir that wakes the universal grove. 

Jas. Seattle, Scotland, 1735-1803. 

73. Patriotism. 
Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
"Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land ? 
"Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
As home his footsteps he hath turned, 

From wandering on a foreign strand ? 

If such there breathe, go, mark him well, — 

For him no minstrel raptures swell; 

High though his titles, proud his name, 

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ; 

Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 

The wretch, concentered all in self, 

Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 

And, doubly dying, shall go down 

To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. 

Walter Scott, Scotland, 1771-1832, 
10 



110 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

74. Summer, 
She is here! 
Amid the distant vales she tarried long, 
But she hath come, oh joy! for I have heard 
Her many-chorded harp the livelong day, 
Sounding from plains and meadows, where, of late, 
Rattled the hail's sharp arrows, and where came 
The wild north wind, careering like a steed 
Unconscious of the rein. She hath gone forth 
Into the forest, and its poised leaves 
Are platformed for the zephyr's dancing feet. 
Under its green pavilions she hath reared 
Most beautiful things; the Spring's pale orphans lie 
Sheltered upon her breast; the bird's loud song 
At morn outsoars his pinion; and when waves 
Put on night's silver harness, the still air 
Is musical with soft tones. She hath baptized 
Earth with her joyful weeping. She hath blessed 
All that do rest beneath the wing of Heaven, 
And all that hail its smile. Her ministry 
Is typical of love. She hath disdained 
No gentle office, but doth bend to twine 
The grape's light tendrils, and to pluck apart 
The heart-leaves of the rose. She doth not pass 
Unmindful of the bruised vine, nor scorn to lift 
The trodden weed; and when the lowlier children 
Faint by the way -side, like worn passengers, 
She is a gentle mother, all night long 
Bathing their pale brows with her healing dews. 
The hours are spendthrifts of her wealth; the days 
Are dowered with her beauty. 

Anna Drinker {Edith May), Penn. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. Ill 

75. An Autumn Evening. 

It was an eve of Autumn's holiest mood, 
The corn-fields, bathed in Cynthia's silver light, 
Stood ready for the reaper's gathering hand; 
And all the winds slept soundly. Nature seemed 
In silent contemplation to adore 
Its maker. Now and then the aged leaf 
Fell from its fellows, rustling to the ground ; 
And, as it fell, bade man think of his end. 
On vale and lake, on wood and mountain high, 
"With pensive wing outspread, sat heavenly Thought, 
Conversing with herself. Vesper looked forth 
From out western hermitage, and smiled; 
And up the East, unclouded, rode the moon 
"With all her stars, gazing on earth intense, 
As if she saw some wonder working there. 

Eobt. Pollok, England, 1799-1827. 

76. The Ocean. 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods , 

There is a rapture on the lonely shore ; 
There is society where none intrudes 

By the deep sea and music in its roar. 
I love not man the less but Nature more, 

From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 

To mingle with the universe, and feel 
"What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

Lord Byron, England, 1788-1824. 



112 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 



77. All is Well. 



The clouds which rise with thunder, slake 

Our thirsty souls with rain; 
The blow most dreaded falls to break 

From off our limbs a chain ; 
And wrongs of man to man but make 

The love of God more plain; 
As through the shadowy lens of even, 
The eye looks farthest into heaven, 
On gleams of star and depths of blue 
The glaring sunshine never knew. 

J. G. WMttier, Mass., 1808- 

78. The Ship of State. 

Thou, too, sail on, ship of State! 
Sail on, Union, strong and great! 
Humanity, with all its fears, 
"With all the hopes of future years, 
Is hanging, breathless, on thy fate! 
We know what Master laid thy keel, 
"What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
"Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
"What anvils rung, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
'Tis but the napping of the sail, 
And not a rent made by the gale! 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 113 

In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 

In spite of false lights on the shore, 

Sail on, fear not to breast the sea! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; 

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 

Are all with thee, — are all with thee! 

H. W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807— . 



79. Forgiveness. 

When on the fragrant sandal-tree 

The woodman's ax descends, 
And she who bloomed so beauteously 

Beneath the keen stroke bends, 
E'en on the edge that brought her death, 
Dying, she breathes her sweetest breath, 
As if to token. in her fall 
"Peace to her foes and love to all ! " 
How hardly man this lesson learns, 
To smile, and bless the hand that spurns; 
To see the blow and feel the pain, 
But render only love again ! 
This spirit ne'er was given on earth; 
One had it, — He of heavenly birth; 
Reviled, rejected, and betrayed, 
No curse he breathed, no plaint He made, 
But when in death's deep pang He sighed, 
Prayed for His murderers and died. 

10* 



114 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

80. Good Heart and Willing Hand. 

In storms or shine, two friends of mine 

Go forth to work or play, 
And when they visit poor men's homes, 

They bless them by the way. 
'Tis willing hand! 'Tis cheerful heart! 

The two best friends I know, 
Around the hearth come joy and mirth 

Where'er their faces glow. 
Come shine — 'tis bright! come dark — 'tis light! 

Come cold — 'tis warm ere long ! 
So heavily fall the hammer stroke ! 

Merrily sound the song ! 

"Who falls may stand, if good right hand 

Is first, not second best: 
Who weeps, may sing, if kindly heart 

Has lodged in his breast. 
The humblest board has dainties poured, 

When they sit down to dine; 
The crust they eat is honey sweet, 

The water good as wine. 
They fill the purse with honest gold, 

They lead no creature wrong; 
So heavily fall the hammer stroke ! 

Merrily sound the song ! 

Without these twain, the poor complain 

Of evils hard to bear, 
But with them, poverty grows rich 

And finds a loaf to spare ! 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 115 

Their looks are fire — their words inspire — 

Their deeds give courage high ; 
About their knees the children run, 

Or climb, they know not why. 
"Who sails, or rides, or walks with them, 

Ne'er finds the journey long; — 
So heavily fall the hammer stroke ! 

Merrily sound the song ! 

Chas. Maekay, Scotland, 1814—. 

81. Faith. 

I have seen 
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, — ■ 
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon 
Brightened with joy, — for murmurings from within 
"Were heard, sonorous cadences, whereby, 
To his belief, the monitor expressed 
Mysterious union with its native sea. 
Even such a shell the universe itself 
Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times, 
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart 
Authentic tidings of invisible things; 
Of ebb and flow and ever-enduring power; 
And central peace, subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation. 

W. Wordsworth, England, 1T70-1S50. 



116 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

82. Morning. 

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, 
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun, 
"When first on this delightful land he spreads 
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, 
Glistening with dew ; fragrant the fertile earth 
After soft showers, and sweet the coming on 
Of grateful evening mild: then silent Night, 
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon, 
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train. 

John Milton, England, 1625-1660. 

83. Trifles. 

Since trifles make the sum of human things, 
And half our misery from our foibles springs; 
Since life's best joys consist in peace and ease, 
And though but few can serve, yet all may please ; 
Oh, let the ungentle spirit learn from hence, 
A small unkindness is a great offence ! 
To spread large bounties, though we wish in vain, 
Yet all may shun the guilt of giving pain. 
To bless mankind with tides of flowing wealth, 
With rank to grace them, or to crown with health, 
Our little lot denies; yet liberal still, 
God gives its counterpoise to every ill; 
Xor let us murmur at our stinted powers, 
When kindness, love, and concord may be ours. 
The gift of ministering to others' ease 
To all her sons impartial Heaven decrees; 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 117 

The gentle offices of patient love, 

Beyond all flattery, and all price above ; 

The mild forbearance at a brother's fault, 

The angry word suppressed, the taunting thought; 

Subduing and subdued the petty strife 

Which clouds the color of domestic life; 

The sober comfort, all the peace which springs 

From the large aggregate of little things. 

Hannah More, England, 1745-1833. 

84. Greatness and Goodness. 

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends ! 

Hath he not always treasures, always friends, 

The good great man ? three treasures, love and light, 

And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath; 

And three firm friends, more sure than day and 

night — 
Himself, his Maker, and the angel death. 

S. T. Coleridge, England, 1772-1834. 

8S. Hope, Love, Faith. 

Hope, only Hope, of all that clings 
Around us, never spreads her wings; 
Love, though he break his earthly chain, 
Still whispers he will come again; 
But Faith, that soars to seek the sky, 
Shall teach our half -fledged souls to fly, 
And find, beyond the smoke and flame, 
The cloudless azure whence they came. 

0. W. Holmes, Mass., 1800—. 



118 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

86. Life. 

Life ! I know not what thou art, 
But know that thou and I must part; 
And when, or how, or where we met, 
I own to me 's a secret yet. 

Life ! we've "been long together, 

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 

Tis hard to part when friends are dear, — 

Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; 

— Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time; 
Say not "Goodnight," — but in some brighter clime 

Bid me " Good morning." 

Anna L. Barbauld, England, 1743-1825. 

87. The Excellent Man. 

They gave me advice and counsel in store, 
Praised me and honored me, more and more; 
Said that I only should ' wait awhile,' 
Offered their patronage, too, with a smile. 

But with all their honor and approbation, 
I should, long ago, have died of starvation, 
Had there not come an excellent man, 
"Who bravely to help me along began. 

Good fellow! he got me the food I ate, 

His kindness and care I shall never forget; 

Yet I cannot embrace him, — though other folks can,— 

For I myself am this excellent man. 

Harper's Magazine. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 119 

88. Life's Aim. 

So live, that when thy summons come to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

W. C. Bryant, Mass., 1808—. 

89. The Housekeeper. 

The frugal snail, with forecast of repose, 
Carries his house with him where'er he goes; 
Peeps out, — and if there comes a shower of rain, 
Retreats to his small domicile again. 
Touch but a tip of him, a horn, — 'tis well — , 
He curls up in his sanctuary shell. 
He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay 
Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. 
Himself he boards and lodges; both invites 
And feasts himself ; sleeps with himself o' nights. 
He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure 
Chattels; himself is his own furniture, 
And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam, — 
Knock when you will, — he's sure to be at home. 

Chas. Lamb, England, 1775-1834. 



120 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

90. The Rainbow. 

My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky ; 
So was it when my life began, 
So is it now I am a man, 
So be it when I shall grow old, 

Or let me die! 
The child is father of the man ; 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety. 

Wm. Wordsworth, England, 1770-1850. 

91. Better than Gold. 

Better than grandeur, better than gold, 
Than rank or titles, a hundred-fold, 
Is a healthful body, a mind at ease, 
And simple pleasures that always please. 
A heart that can feel for a neighbor's woe, 
And share his joy with a friendly glow, 
"With sympathies large enough to enfold 
All men as brothers, is better than gold. 

Better than gold is the sweet repose 

Of the sons of toil when their labors close; 

Better than gold is the poor man's sleep, 

And the balm that drops on his slumbers deep. 

Better than gold is a thinking mind, 

That in realms of thought and books can find 

A treasure surpassing Australian ore, 

And live with the great and good of yore. 

Alex. Smart. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 121 

92. The American Flag. 

When Freedom from her mountain height, 

Unfurled her standard to the air, 
She tore the azure robe of night, 

And set the stars of glory there! 
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 
The milky baldric of the skies, 
And striped its pure celestial white 
"With streakings of the morning light; 
Then, from his mansion in the sun, 
She called her eagle-bearer down, 
And gave into his mighty hand 
The symbol of her chosen land. 

J. E. Drake, New York, 1795-1S20. 

93. Small Beginnings. 

A nameless man, amid a crowd that thronged the 

daily mart, 
Let fall a word of hope and love, unstudied from 

the heart; 
A whisper on the tumult thrown, — a transitory 

breath, — 
It raised a brother from the dust; it saved a soul 

from death.. 
germ ! fount ! word of love ! thought at 

random cast ! 
Ye were but little at the first, but mighty at the last. 

Chas. Mackay, Scotland, 1814—. 
11 



122 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

94. Gold. 

Gold ! gold ! gold ! gold ! 
Bright and yellow, hard and cold, 
Molten, graven, hammered and rolled; 
Heavy to get and light to hold; 
Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold. 
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled: 
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old 
To the very verge of the church-yard mould ; 
Price of many a crime untold; 
Gold! gold! gold! gold! 
Good or bad a thousand-fold ! 

How widely its agencies vary, — 
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless, — 
As ever its minted coins express, 
Now stamped with the image of good Queen Bess, 

And now of a bloody Mary. 

Tlvos. Hood, England, 179S-1S45. 

95. Influence. 

The smallest bark on life's tumultuous ocean 
Will leave a track behind for evermore; 
The lightest wave of influence, set in motion, 
Extends and widens to the eternal shore. 
We should be wary, then, who go before 
A myriad yet to be, and we should take 
Our bearing carefully where breakers roar 
And fearful tempests gather: one mistake 
May wreck unnumbered barks that follow in our 
wake. 

Mrs. S. T. Bolton, Ohio. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 123 

96. What Gives Strength. 

For strength is born of struggle, faith of doubt, 
Of discord, law, and freedom of oppression: 

We hail from Pisgah, with exulting shout, 

The promised land below us, bright with sun, 

And deem its pastures won, 

Ere toil and blood have earned us the possession ! 

Each aspiration of our human earth 

Becomes an act through keenest pangs of birth; 

Each force, to bless, must cease to be a dream, 

And conquer life through agony supreme; 

Each inborn right must outwardly be tested 
By stern material weapons, ere it stand 
In the enduring fabric of the land, 

Secured for those who yielded it, and those who 
wrested. 

Bayard Taylor, Penn., 1825—. 

97. Expression. 

Expression is the dress of thought, and still 

Appears more decent as more suitable: 

A vile conceit in pompous words expressed, 

Is like a clown in regal purple dressed; 

For different styles with different subjects sort, 

As several garbs, with country, town, and court. 

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; 

Alike fantastic, if too new or old: 

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 

A. Pope, England, 1688-1744. 



124 CHOICE THOUGHTS. 

98. Effort. 

The heights by great men gained and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight; 

But they, while their companions slept, 
"Were toiling upwards in the light. 

m W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807—. 

99. How to Live. 
He liveth long who liveth well ; 

All else is life but flung away ; 
He iivest longest who can tell 

Of true things truly done each day. 
Then fill each hour with what will last; 

Buy up the moments as they go; 
The life above, when this is past, 

is the ripe fruit of life below. 

H. Bonar, Scotland, 1S0S— . 

100. The Disciple. 

"Who meekly folds his hand in Jesus' palm, 
And follows Him through dusty lane and street, 
Through store and market-place, at home, abroad, 
And in the busy haunts of men, as much 
As in the lonely stillness of the night, 
Clings ever nearer to the Lord's close touch, 
To me is Christ's disciple if, with mine, 
His heartbeats do but throb in unison, 
Though eye see not to eye, will waiting stand, 
Till, when the thin disguise of speech shall fall, 
On his brow shall be written, Christ my All. 

TT';rc. L. Gage, X. H., 1S33-. 



CHOICE THOUGHTS. 125 

101. Short Words. 

Think not that strength lies in the big round word, 

Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak. 
To whom can this seem true, that once has heard 

The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak 
W hen want, or woe, or fear is in the throat, 

So that each word gasped out is like a shriek 
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note, 

Sung by some foe or fiend. There is a strength 
Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine, 

Which has more height than breadth, more depth 
than length. 
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine, 

And he that will may take the sleek fat phrase, 
Which glows and burns not, though it gleam and shine — 

Light, but not heat, — a flash, but not blaze. 

J. A. Alexander, Penn., 1809-1880. 

102. A Character. 

0, happiest he, whose riper years retain 

The hopes of youth, unsullied by a stain ! 

His eve of life in calm content shall glide, 

Like the still streamlet to the ocean tide: 

No gloomy cloud hangs o'er his tranquil day ; 

No meteor lures him from his home astray ; 

For him there glows with glittering beam on high 

Love's changeless star that leads him to the sky; 

Still to the past he sometimes turns to trace 

The mild expression of a mother's face, 

And dreams, perchance, as oft in earlier years, 

The low, sweet music of her voice he hears. 

J. T. Fields, New Hampshire, 1820—. 
11* 



AUTHOES. 



Addison, 49 

Alexander, J. A., 125 

Alison, A., 21 

Anon., GT, 72, 82, 84, 113 

Ascham, Roger, 34 

Audubon, J. J., 52 

Bailey, P. J., 68 

Bancroft, Geo., 60 

Barbauld, Anna L., 118 

Barnes, Albert, 40 

Bateman, Newton, 61 

Beattie, Jas., 109 

Beecher H. W 6, 58, 63 

Bolton, Mrs. S. T., 122 

Bonar, H., 124 

Bryant, W. C 79, 119 

Bulwer, Lytton, IT, 64 

Bushnell, H., 27 

Burritt, Elihu, 38 

Carlyle, T., 7 

Charming, W. E 12, 48 

Chapin,E. H 59 

Chateaubriand, F. A., 11 

Child, Maria L., 30 

Choate, Rufus, 52 

Cole, Thos., 101 

Coleridge, S. T., 117 

Cowper, Wm 77, 102 

Dana, R. H., 5 

Derzhavin, G. R., 71 

Dickens, Chas., 50 

Doane, Bishop, 29 



Drake, J. R. 121 

Drinker, Anna, , 110 

Dryden, J., 95 

Dwight, Time, 15 

Emerson, R. "W., 49, 54, 55, 94 

Everett, Edw., .... 10, 16, 36, 44, 53, 

56, 57 

Fields, J. T., 125 

Franklin, B., 57 

Gage, Wm. L., 124 

Goldsmith, O., 98 

Greeley, H., 23, 46 

Greenwood, F. W. D., 21 

Griffin, Gerald, 69 

Hale, Sarah M., 55 

Hale, Matthew, 11 

Hall, Newman, GO 

nalleck,F. G., 70 

Heber, Bishop 19, 49, 94 

Herbert, George, 98 

Holland, J. G., 88 

Holmes, O. W., 25,74,117 

Hood, Thos., 122 

Howitt, Wm., 13 

Hunt, Leigh, S5 

Tngelow, Jean, 76 

Irving, Washington,.. .13, 22, 58, 59 

Jcwsbury, Maria J., 67 

Keats, John 73 

Keble, John, 73 



AUTHORS. 



127 



Kemble, Frances A., 75 

Kempis, Thos. a, 51 

Kinney, Mrs. E. C 70 

Kruuimacher, F. A., 86 

Landon, L. E., 82 

Landor, W. S., 31 

Leyden, J., 108 

Longfellow, H. W., 9, 20, 29, 43, 71, 
87, 99, 112, 124 

Lowell, J. K., 80, 103 

Lynch, Anna C, 90 

Macaulay, T. B. 59 

Mackay, Chas., 114, 121 

Mann, Horace, 5, 14 

Milton, John 116 

Mitchell, D. G., 54 

Mitchell, O.M.,. 18 

More, Hannah, 78,116 

More, Thos., 107 

Norton, Caroline E., 83 

Norton, Andrew, 27 

Osgood, Frances S., 74 

Parker, Theo 45 

Pellico, Silvio, 50 

Percival, J. G., 76 

Pierpont, John, 84 

Pollok, Robt.,. . 91, 107, 111 

Pope, A, 83,123 

Quarles, Francis, 51 

Read.T. B., 97 

Ruskin, John, 35 

Scott, W., 48,87,109 



Shakspeare, W. , S6, 91, 100, 108 

Sigourney, Mrs. L. H., 79 

Smart, Alex., 120 

Smiles, S., 45 

Smith, Alex., 63 

Smith, Sydney, 8, 32 

Southey, Robt., 75 

Stephens, Alex. H., 62 

Stewart, Dugald, 8 

Sumner, Chas., 25,28,32 

Swain, Chas., 92 

Swain, Leonard, 17 

Taylor, Bayard, 105, 123 

Taylor, Jane, .19, 104 

Thomson, Jas., .72, 106 

Todd, John. 57 

Trench, R. C, 66, 73 

Trowbridge, J., 43 

Vaux, Thos., 69 

Washington, Geo., 23 

Ware, Henry W., Jr., 65 

Wayland, F., 51 

Webster, Dan'l, .30, 34 

Webly, Amelia B., 80 

Whately, R., 42 

Whipple, E. P., 24, 33, 39, 47 

Whipple, Bishop, 10 

Whittier , J. G., 77, 96, 112 

Wilson, John, .... 106 

Winthrop, R. C, 46 

Wolfe, Chas., 41 

Wordsworth, Wm., 90, 115, 120 

Young, Edw. , 78, 92 



CONTENTS. 



PKOSE. 

Page. 

1 Well Doing, R. H. Dana, 5 

2 Education, Horace Mann, 6 

3 Books, H. W. Beecher, 6 

4 Work, T. Carlyle, 7 

5 Reflection, D. Stewart, 8 

6 Knowledge, Sydney Smith, S 

7 Life, n. W. Longfellow, 9 

8 A Nation's Glory, Bishop Whipple, 10 

9 Knowledge and Gold, Edw. Everett, 10 

10 Truthfulness, Matthew Hale, 11 

11 God in Nature, F. A. Chateaubriand, 11 

12 The Beautiful, W. E. Channing, 12 

13 Resolution, W. Irving, 13 

14 Labor, Wm. Howitt, 13 

15 Universal Education, Horace Mann, 14 

16 Goodness of God, Timothy Dwight, 15 

17 The Sun, Edw. Everett, 16 

18 The Sea, Leonard Swain, 17 

19 Our Destiny Lord Lytton (Bulwer), 17 

20 The Solar System, O. M. Mitchell, IS 

21 Man D. Webster, 19 

22 Swiftness of Life, Bishop Hebcr, 19 

23 The Present Moment, Jane Taylor, 19 

24 A Swedish Night, ..H. W. Longfellow, 20 

25 True Support, F. W. P. Greenwood, 21 

26 Amusements, A. Alison, 21 

27 Female Fortitude, : . . . W. Irving 22 

28 War, Geo. Washington, 23 

29 True Living, Horace Greeley, 23 

30 Books, E. P. Whipple, 24 

31 The Love of Glory, Chas. Sumner, 25 

32 Truth and Falsehood, O. W. Holmes, 25 



CONTENTS. 129 

Page. 

33 The True Hero, H. Bushnell, 27 

34 Influence Lasting A. Norton, 27 

35 Knowledge, Chas. Sumner, 23 

36 Charity, H. W. Longfellow, 29 

37 A Gentleman, Bishop Doane, 29 

38 Politeness, Mrs. Child, 30 

39 Washington, Daniel Webster, 30 

40 The Power of a Word, W. S. Landor, 31 

41 Happiness in Memory, Sydney Smith, 32 

42 The Diffusion of Knowledge, Chas. Sumner, 32 

43 Books, E. P. Whipple 33 

44 Erroneous Action, R- Ascham, 34 

45 Intelligence, Daniel Webster, 34 

46 Nature, J. RusMn, 35 

47 The Skeptic, E.Everett, 36 

48 Success, H. W. Longfellow, 38 

49 Motive, Elihu Burritt, 38 

50 Books, E. P.Whipple, 39 

51 The Charities of Life, Albert Barnes, 40 

52 Our Creator, Chas. Wolfe, 41 

53 True Value, R. Whately, 42 

51 Behind Time, Freeman Hunt, 42 

55 Education, J. T. Trowbridge, 43 

56 The Land of Song H.W.Longfellow, 43 

57 The Heavens at Dawn, E.Everett, 44 

58 The Best Books, Theo. Parker, 45 

59 Character, S. Smiles, 45 

60 A True Life, Horace Greeley, 46 

61 Washington, R. C. Winthrop, 48 

62 Genius, E. P. Whipple, 47 

63 Language P. C. Trench, 47 

64 Fortitude and Perseverance W. Scott, 48 

65 The Beautiful Unappreciated, W. E. Channing, 48 

68 Eternity, Bishop Heber, 49 

67 The Present Hour, R. W. Emerson, 49 

68 Cheerfulness, Addison, 49 

69 Family Courtesy, Silvio Pellico, 50 

70 Death C. Dickens, 50 

71 The True Man...... T. a Kempis, 51 

72 Submission, F. Quarles, 51 

73 True Greatness, F. Wayland, 51 

74 The Humming Bird, J. J. Audubon, 52 

75 A New England Summer, Rufus Choate, 52 



130 CONTENTS. 

Page. 

76 General Intelligence, F. "Wayland, 53 

77 The True Monument, Edw. Everett, 53 

78 Beauty, .R. W. Emerson, 54 

79 Benevolence, W. Irvine;, 54 

80 Light and Sunshine, D. G. Mitchell, 54 

81 Greatness Promoted, R.W.Emerson, 55 

82 Good Advice, S. M. Hale, 55 

83 Mount Washington, Edw. Everett, 56 

84 How to be Remembered, B. Franklin, 56 

55 True Living, John Todd, 57 

56 Education, Edw. Everett, 57 

87 Pride, B. Franklin, 57 

88 A Christian's Life, n. W. Beecher, 58 

89 Intemperance, W. Irving, 5S 

90 Happiness, W. Irving, 59 

91 Christianity, T. B. Macaulay, 59 

92 Profanity, E. H. Chapin, 59 

93 Labor, Newman Hall, CO 

94 Charity, Geo. Bancroft, 60 

95 Rectitude, . .Newton Bateman, 61 

96 Object of Education, Sydney Smith, 62 

97 Energy, Alex. H. Stephens, 62 

98 June, II. W. Beecher, 63 

99 My Library, Alex. Smith, 63 

100 True Reading, Lord Lytton (Bulwer), 64 

POETRY. 

1 The Voyage of Life, nenry Ware, Jr., 65 

2 Be Patient, R. C. Trench, 66 

3 Life, Anon. 67 

4 Passing Away, Maria J. Jewsbury, 67 

5 Good Advice, Notes and Queries, 68 

6 True Living, P J. Bailey, 68 

7 Thought, Thos. Yaux, 69 

8 God's Love, Gerald Griffin, 69 

9 Cultivation, Mrs. E. C. Kinney, 70 

10 Twilight, F. G. Halleck, 70 

11 The Rainy Day, H.W.Longfellow, 71 

12 God, G. R. Derzhavin, 71 

13 The Seasons, Jas. Thomson, 72 

14 Five Things, Anon. , 72 

15 Example, JohnKeble, 73 

16 The Difference, R. C Trench, 73 



CONTENTS. 131 

Pagb 

17 The Living Temple, O.W.Holmes, 74 

IS Labor, Frances S.Osgood, 74 

19 The Tempest, Robt. Southey, 75 

20 Faith, Frances A. Kemble, 75 

21 Poetry, j. G. Percival, 76 

22 Memory, j ean ingelow, 76 

23 A Twilight Picture,.. , J. G. Whittier 77 

24 Knowledge and Wisdom, Wm. Cowper, 77 

25 Wisdom, Hannah More, 7S 

26 Time, Edw. Young, 7S 

27 The Gain of Adversity, Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, 79 

28 Duty and Ptight, W.C.Bryant, 79 

29 The Rainbow, Amelia B. Webly, SO 

30 Earnest Workers, J. Russell Lowell, SO 

31 The Guilty Conscience, Lord Byron, SI 

32 The Cost of Success, L. E. Landon, 82 

33 True Philosophy, Anon., 82 

34 The Weaver, Mrs. Norton, 83 

35 Dying Thoughts, John Pierpont, 84 

36 A Good Life Anon., 84 

37 Philanthropy, Leigh Hunt, 85 

38 The Moss Rose, F. A. Krummacher,. 86 

39 Neglected Opportunity, Shakspeare, S6 

40 Disaster, H. W. Longfellow, 87 

41 Paternal Love, W. Scott, 87 

42 Ignorance May be Bliss, A.Pope, S3 

43 How to Rise, J. G. Holland, SS 

44 An Alpine Storm, Lord Byron, 89 

45 Seek only the Good, Anna C. Lynch, 90 

46 All may Gain Essential Knowledge, . W. Wordsworth, 90 

47 The Passing of Time, Shakspeare, 91 

4S Nature, Robt. Pollok, 91 

49 Time's Importance, Edw. Young, 92 

50 Daily Worth, Chas. Swain, 92 

51 The Grasshopper and Cricket, John Keats, 93 

•52 The Rhodora, R. W. Emerson, 94 

53 The Lilies, Bishop Heber, 94 

54 Trial and Hope, Dryden, 95 

55 The Angel of Patience, J. G. Whittier, 96 

56 The Angler, T. Buchanan Read, 97 

57 Home, O. Goldsmith, 98 

58 Virtue, Geo. Herbert, 98 

59 Old Age, Longfellow, 99 

60 Good Counsel, Shakspeare, 100 



132 CONTENTS. 

Page. 

61 ASunset, Thos. Cole, 101 

62 Exertion Essential, W. Cowper, 102 

63 Truth, J.E.Lowell, 103 

64 Life, Jane Taylor, 104 

65 The Mountains, Bayard Taylor, 105 

66 The Soul's Emblem, John Wilson, 106 

67 Sunset, Jas. Thomson, 106 

68 Happiness, Robert Pollok, 107 

69 Memory's Power, Thos. More, 107 

70 The Mind, Shakspeare, 10S 

71 Sabbath Morning, J. Leyden, 108 

72 Morning's Music, Jas. Beattie, 109 

73 Patriotism, Walter Scott 109 

74 Summer, ... Anna Drinker, 110 

75 An Autumn Evening, E. Pollok, Ill 

76 TheOcean, Lord Byron, Ill 

77 All is Well J. G. Whittier, 112 

78 The Ship of State, Longfellow, 112 

79 Forgiveness, Anon., 113 

80 Good Heart and Willing Hand, C. Mackay, 114 

81 Faith, Wordsworth, 115 

82 Morning, Milton, 110 

83 Trifles, Hannah More, 116 

84 Greatness and Goodness, S. T. Coleridge, 117 

85 Hope, Love, Faith, O.W.Holmes, 117 

86 Life, Anna L. Barbauld, 118 

87 The Excellent Man, Harpers' Magazine, 118 

88 Life's Aim, Bryant, 119 

89 The Housekeeper, Chas. Lamb, 119 

90 The Rainbow, Wordsworth,....* 120 

91 Better than Gold, Alex. Smart, 120 

92 The American Flag, J. R. Drake, 121 

93 Small Beginnings, Chas. Mackay, 121 

94 Gold, Thos. Hood 122 

95 Influence Mrs. S. T. Bolton, 122 

96 What Gives Strength, Bayard Taylor, 123 

97 Expression, A. Pope 123 

9S Effort, Longfellow, 124 

99 How to Live, H. Bonar, 124 

100 The Disciple W. L. Gage 124 

101 Short Words, J. A. Alexander, 125 

102 ACharacter, J. T. Fields, 125 




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